(soft upbeat music) - I thought I would be a musician.

And then I started to realize everyone is a musician so it doesn't matter, like.

(bright upbeat music) I'm David Onri Anderson, a painter from Nashville, Tennessee.

And I like to paint about the Earth.

I communicate with angels.

And that process of like trying to paint about them and trying to like have that interaction, it sort of came about in 2020 with quarantine.

I realized like I had nothing on my calendar, nothing in my mind, nothing left to do, but I still had my studio and we had to just figure out what was gonna happen in life.

So I started thinking about some of my favorite artists like William Blake, Emanuel Swedenborg and some other, and Hilma af Klint.

And just thinking about reaching out to higher beings, particularly angels, to like help in this crazy time.

And apparently, they are willing to help.

I've always enjoyed artists and authors that sort of create characters and worlds and like name them all and sort of like give them mythologies and their own like inner lives.

My life in Tennessee has kind of exposed me to, of course, like religion, nature, Indigenous mythology.

And then also my mom is from France and her dad's from Algeria.

So there's this Algerian story about us that is mysterious to me 'cause I don't speak French and I don't speak Arabic and so I can only understand a little bit of my own mythology and my story.

So I'm constantly like trying to make sense of my own life as well as life itself.

And I'm using names, feelings and experiences throughout all time for myself 'cause I like Medieval art a lot.

But I use all sorts of influences to sort of just create what I hope is like an original sort of creation of like this is my take on the sun and the Earth and what fire is.

When someone looks at my work, I hope that they can at least have something at least new happen inside of them or really, really old, I don't know.

But like something that sort of takes them out of their everyday way of being and thinking and all of a sudden makes 'em aware of like, "You are here, "you can do anything right now."

And hopefully like the work will make them realize like, "Oh, this is something I haven't considered "or taken that seriously."

Or like, "I could do this too, but differently than that," like anything that sort of makes the person sort of more awake or more themself or more like able, I think that's, to me what happens when I see good art.

(bright upbeat music)