There are people in your life who, even if you haven't met them, move you or change the way you feel about yourself. Music does that so often, literature transforms your perspective and of course looking at a painting can send you into other realms and dimensions. We are moved by the things we can't physically touch and moved by the people we have never met. In the realm of contemporary Art, that elusive capital A art world, there aren't many people quite like David "Mr StarCity" White, a painter who embodies a creative life by not just his output, but his ability to make people feel included and seen, to capture a sound or poem or embrace in a work and in his words that is both rare and wholly original. His solo show, Before There Was Life, There Were People I Never Met, on view for a few more days at Salon 94, is a testament to his unique observation of the world, our collective history and our understaning of beauty in our daily lives. 

I havne't written much about David in the past but what I do understand is that art is supposed to bring people together to better recognize our individuality and collectiveness, and he is the one artist I often look for a sense of "where we are at" together. This show features a dozen paintings, his poems, sculptures, and as the gallery notes, built around "postivity, optimism, and spiritual musings." But I feel like this work is Jazz and has a sound and a soundtrack; it’s about music and books and love and pain and the past and the future. In the vein of social realists, the work is about a real life seen through fantasy of what could and should be, but often with a little sadness in that this is what is. But mainly, it's about an embrace when we need it, about a positive affirmation, about memory and soul searching. It's about life. —Evan Pricco

Before there was life,
There were people I never met, Holding onto faith,
Living with no regrets.
Dancing with the moon, Searching for a smile,
Leaving things behind,
Walking on for miles.
They miss the touch of roses, The leaves against the wind.
If they could smell the flowers, Then they could breathe again.

- David ‘Mr.StarCity’ White (2021)