David T. Kessler
David T. Kessler (born 1950 in Park Ridge, New Jersey) is an American artist primarily known for his photo-realist paintings. Although he is a longtime resident of Phoenix, Arizona, Kessler launched his career in San Francisco in the mid 1970s, at a time when a significant school of photo-realism was emerging in the Bay Area. Education Kessler received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Arizona State University in 1972. There, he studied with artists Rip Woods, Art Jacobsen, and Muriel Magenta, among others. In 1973 he moved to northern California to attend the MFA program of the world renowned San Francisco Art Institute. Artistic Experiments and Career Not long after graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1975, Kessler gained significant attention for his photo-realist paintings, specifically a body of work known as the "Ruined Slide Series." Using damaged slides (often of family photographs or ordinary images) as the basis for airbrushed compositions, he was able to maintain the aesthetic principles of photo-realism while relying on the aberrations of the slides, such as light streaks or overexposed areas, in order to incorporate elements of abstraction into his paintings. Writing in the 1980 publication Super Realist Painting & Sculpture,