D.S. Gordon attended the San Francisco Arts Institute and UCLA, receiving a BA in Anthropology in 1980 while employed as illustrator for the Archaeological Survey. In I979, he studied painting at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Bourges, France. He left school and hitchhiked across Europe, Iran,Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal, painting small murals. In 1983, D.S. worked as an assistant to Terry Schoonhoven on his Los Angeles Olympics mural, and in 1984 was commissioned to paint an 8,400 square foot retaining wall on Ocean Park Boulevard in Santa Monica, California. Since that time he has designed and painted 60 site-specific murals throughout the USA, including 4 artworks for the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia, and two walls inside the Visitors Center on Independence Mall. In 2003, he was invited to paint a mural during the Festival International des Arts Plastiques in Mahares, Tunisia. For the past several years, D.S. has had the opportunity to work locally, producing murals in Sebastopol, Sonoma, Occidental and this coming spring in Boyes Hot Springs.
Work in the studio consists of smaller paintings on canvas for two series: a landscape genre using tar and acrylics with a defined horizon line influenced by living in west Sonoma County, and a setting of two large heads facing off across a table. This grouping is titled MonoHeads, and was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1988.
