Queer Mysteries (detail) 
acrylic back painted on plexiglass, 8’X192” (dimensions of entire mural), 1993.
In the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art



“I’ve always had trouble with the idea of a gay sensibility. There are as many gay sensibilities as there are any other kind.

But within the gay community at large, things like the AIDS epidemic have forced us to be analytical about people’s emotional reactions, and also with our own emotional reactions.

So thinking in terms of a sensibility where we are critical of the world and ourselves, then yes, it has a gay sensibility…I’m trying to place that stance within the context of something else; to not make it stand out really big, but to put it into a larger context, which in the best of all worlds would happen, where it’s part of the world.”

— Excerpt from David’s interview with Nayland Blake 
Shift Magazine, volume 4, 1990 - Number 2
in conjunction with his solo 1990 Grant for Individual Artists

Photo by Rebecca Solnit. July 4, 1991

Estate of David Cannon Dashiell/
Artists Rights Association, ARS, New York City