“Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”

- George Bernard Shaw

For 45-year-old Fort Wayne native David Krouse - the painter, sculptor, set designer, gallery owner, teacher, father, husband, house painter and all-around mensch - life is good.

Even if things weren’t exactly all right, you’d never know it in talking with him. A decidedly uptempo, the-glass-is-half-full-type personality, art is a verb to Krouse, and everything he does in his life reflects art. In other words, he does everything as well as he can.

He’s not going to paint you a picture of some false reality or direct you down some primrose lane. He speaks, thinks and creates truth as he sees it, scarce traits in these times, but ones which have endeared him to colleagues, friends and family.

Oh yeah, this affable artist also accommodates a sense of humor that abides the cryptic and tests the limits of political correctness. One never leaves his presence without having enjoyed a full-bellowed laugh.

Quick to realize the many ironies of life, Krouse seizes every chance to portray hypocrisy in all its forms in a variety of media.

Krouse the artist didn’t invent his expressionist style in a vacuum, he’ll gladly explain, as he did recently in a Fort Wayne Museum of Art presentation. Its origins are traceable to Fort Wayne Art Institute professors Russell Oettel, Noel Duschenchon and George McCullough and his own admiration of the German Expressionists Max Beckmann, Ernst Kirchner and Emil Nolde.

“I think these artists were people who lived in their times to the fullest extent,” said Krouse. “They recognized the nature of human folly. Their collective works are intense, some might say extreme and allegorical. Later they toned down some of the drama, but most definitely they have been major influences in both style and subject matter.

“Some people see Cubist-African elements in my sculpture and they’re correct,” added Krouse. “But I’ve certainly never limited myself to the role of copyist. The times, new techniques and various advantages won’t allow for that type of repetition.”

After earning his BFA from IPFW after the state had absorbed the older Art School, he applied for graduate school. Though he was accepted at several schools, only Bowling Green offered him a teaching position as well as admission to the program. By then he was married to Mary Rondot and father of two daughters. For two years Krouse commuted the 90 miles to and from the Ohio campus while Mary worked as a nurse. Together they raised the children while Krouse earned his MFA in 1994.

Krouse began showing his work locally and regionally at a number of venues, including IPFW, Artlink, the Allen Co. Public Library, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Chamber of Commerce, Henry’s, the universities of Evansville and Saint Francis, and he designed stage settings for the Fort Wayne Dance Collective. Many of his works are held in private collections.

Almost seven years ago Krouse, with the support and encouragement of Mary, plunged into the arena of gallery ownership and purchased a two-story brick building that formerly housed a metal fabrication shop on South Calhoun Street near the Oyster Bar. After nearly a year of restoration and reconstruction, he opened the 1911 Gallery fronting a spacious studio where he could work.

The space quickly earned a reputation as an edgy place to be shown and seen, and Krouse’s efforts attracted a considerable following. Among the shows he either produced or help promote were a solo exhibition of sculptor Dale Enochs, Dongo’s Curb Feelers, the glass works of Richard Fizer and several group shows, including the IPFW senior show, works by the E4 collective and group gatherings for Michael Poorman, Suzanne Galazka, Don Kruse and Bill Snyder. The 1911 was a perennial on the Trolley Art Event.

All during this period Krouse continued to create his own pieces while earning his living working as an artist-in-residence at elementary, middle and high schools throughout the area and occasionally returning to a trade he learned as a youth, house painting, inside and out.

A survey of Krouse’s work - like the grouping he used for his recent FWMOA presentation - can be viewed as perplexing, provocative and enlightening. Nonetheless, certain themes - magic, ritual and manipulation - are nearly always in focus. Other favorite notions, like power, gamesmanship, pride, love gone stale, motherly protection and self-discovery, are often interwoven into his canvases canvas.

Sometimes, like in his large canvas, Robert Bly Weekend, he offers us a sarcastic take on the self-absorbed poet’s man movement of the 1980s, with a gathering of guys, drums and fire all gone amuck with one fellow running hard stage right to escape the event. To tell another reoccurring subject, that being his childhood recollections of Catholic church ritual and mystery, Krouse selects a rabbit-out-of-the-hat magician and a levitation trick. In both cases the artist places his characters under cabaret-type theatrical lighting and assigns them cheesy expressions. In other pieces Krouse uses shell-game motifs or clusters of people he refers to as skeptics.

In his black-and-white monoprints Krouse draws upon his life-long love affair with photography. They emote raw strength and power in their simplicity and could have come directly out of the era associated with his friends Beckmann, Kirchner and Nolde. Very precious these pieces, especially some of the smaller ones.

In his latest paintings Krouse has reached for a more bold and colorful palette to create homages to Van Gogh or later Beckmann pieces. His Garden Girl captures the colors of a sunlit garden and more than a hint of his wife Mary whose gardening instincts have become legendary in the couple’s South Side neighborhood.

As much as Krouse enjoys talking about and with other artists, he also likes his music, which can go from the subtle and driven sounds of Miles Davis and John Coltrane to the vibrant rhythm and blues of Jimmy Hendrix and Tom Waits. In terms of film, Krouse likes his classic Euro-cinema heroes Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman and Wim Wenders.

Today Krouse himself is poised like one of his subjects to exit at least partially from the art business scene.

“I’ve put the gallery up for sale,” explained Krouse. “I have and still enjoy most every minute of it, but it does take so much time and effort to run things properly, and that subtracts from my own time in the studio, something I miss more and more. Certainly the economic environment we’re experiencing has affected the business of art collecting in recent years, but that’s not the sole factor that has influenced my decision. I need my own kind of downsizing.”

That’s downsize, not disappear.