Through a combination of staining, drawing and painting, David Baerwalde creates works that have the soft, rich, tactile quality of aged fabric. Drawing upon classical as well as modern art historical references, Baerwalde's painting are metaphors for the timeless questions of identity and man's symbiotic relationship with the earth.

The feeling of effortless, organic, almost inevitable beauty in Baerwalde's finished work belies the long process of distressing the material surface and the emotional and physical labor involved in arriving at a finished piece. Baerwalde explains of his paintings, "I enjoy an element of unpredictability when making them, often exploring new materials in an attempt to work in a reactive mode, rather than from a comfort zone of known process and result."

"Baerwalde examines the subtleties of an increasingly subliminal aesthetic... With their mysterious narrative qualities and often solitary figures, his almost-abstractions seem an existential autobiography.". -Cathy Byrd, 2001