"For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with representations of the visual world.  As an artist I try to express my thoughts, feelings, and visions in whatever subject I explore.  Whether I am working on a landscape, portrait, or still-life, I search for ways to transform my subjects into vital images.  Often this means enhancing the colors, tones, or textural qualities, but always I try and remain truthful to the source, thus creating an image that will appear tangible to the viewer in its’ realism.

I’m drawn emotionally towards the beauty in small objects,such as the texture on the petals of a dried flower, or the way light catches the gleam in someone’s eye, or the reflections in a mottled glass vase.  In carefully observing these subjects I discover a world that is filled with many subtle nuances that are often missed at a quick glance, and in the process of drawing or painting them, I become absorbed in a visual poem.  I feel very fortunate to be able to experience this, and I hope that the outcome will touch others as intensely as the process of creating them touches me."

David Rivera hold a Masters in Fine Art degree, cum laude, fron the New York Academy of Figurative Art. He also graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.  At present  besides focusing on his fine art painting he is an assistant professor of fine arts at Mercer County College, Trenton, N.J. He  also teaches  figure drawing and oil painting at Somerset Art Association

David has had a number of exhibits at the Trenton City Museum and received the President's Award in 2002. In 1999 he received the Eleanor Gray Prize for Still Life-- the Earl Donelson Figue Painting Award and the Pennsylvinia Academy of Fine Art's Thomas Eakins Award

"Artists Salomon Kadosche and Delores D'Achille when I saw their work I simply fell in love with both of them. They used a classic use of color, light and texture, masterly applies with gentleness that has long disappeared from the contemporary art scene....until I saw Davis Rivera's work... David was the only person to qualify four paintings in the history of the Ellarslie Open." Brian O. Hill, Director Trenton City Museum.