David Rosales

David Rosales is a San Francisco native born in 1970. He began working in Creativity Explored’s studio in 2007 and worked through 2012. 

Rosales exclusively depicts faces, though in a variety of media. He uses oil pastel, marker, and embossed metal to create iconic portraits drawn from his own imagination. Rosales sometimes arranges these bold, brightly-colored faces into a series, repeating their basic shape while changing the colors of the eyes, hair, or skin.

His figures exude mystery. Their half-lidded eyes betray their grinning mouths and impart a coy sultriness to these seemingly straight-forward vibrant faces. Over loose swaths of color, the background is often a contour of lines that radiate from and through the figure, locating the figure in the portrait and reinforcing the complexity of expression he captures.