DAVID BOGGS is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana, where he earned his M.F.A. in 1982. He received a B.F.A. from Oklahoma State University in 1979.

"I like the idea of offerings -- things set aside, or offered up to the gods in gratitude or in honor."

BOGGS' works rely on a drawn approach to painting. Drawing, if defined as a linear representation, conveys the central subject matter, while a variety of glazed effects and surface marks create atmoshpere and a sense of historical context.

It is clear that BOGGS is influenced by proto-Renaissance Italian art, in which the underlying drawing remains present in the finished painting. Many of these works feel as though they are aged and patinated by the brown, warm overlayers. The viewer is caught suspending a degree of disbelief -- we know for a fact these are not wall fragments lifted from the Mediterranean basin, and yet we are more than willing to play along when Boggs' execution is so deft.

The visual vocabulary lends these works an iconic, timeless quality. BOGGS views these works as painted offerings. Image-making becomes a way to hold up the experience of sensory delight and give thanks for it. The pleasures of food and flowers and familiar imagery become enshrined in the more permanent state of a painted image, fixed in memory as rendered information.

His work conveys a sense of history, of time passing. The warmth inherent in each piece suggests a history of activity; a history of the making of each fresco-like piece is revealed in its thin, varied layers.