David Drey
David Drey
David Drey
If the philosophic aim is to re-animate a fallen disenchanted world, to re-animate things and objects (even if only the painting itself as object), do I envisage this as simply the creation of lively coloured paintings? No, there is more to it than that; a complex involvement with the history of painting, with materials and ideas. Constable, through painting the scenes of his childhood aimed to re-animate his childhood vision of the landscape through an apparently unmediated, fresh perception of Nature and through his use of paint as an equivalent for the forces of Nature. I am interested in exploring the phenomenal world of appearances and in the tension between the “abstract” and the representational, iconographic elements. But not directly, like Constable. Modern painting, especially abstract expressive painting, has altered and modified sensation, expanding the possibilities of response to the phenomenal world ( Matisse’s merging of window and wall).And latterly it has expanded or re-invented the way images are employed, recognising their poetic autonomy and power, so that the word “image” can refer not only to the figurative element but to the “abstract” painterly facture of the work as well.
For example, in my painting “ On The Edge” a chair seems to be teetering upon an abyss. The chair exits in my studio but the painting is obviously not a straightforward representation of a chair. The colours are not bright, obvious colours. They appear rich and deep, not copied from someone else. To me this is surprising and not like I have seen in another persons work. The paint functions as a living element in it’s own right and this signals to me an imaginative involvement. The image is poetic, not literal. “Abstract” areas can be experienced as content, the “image in the form” (as Adrian Stokes remarked in one of his essays).The Painting is a metaphorical expression...my situation, perhaps the situation of painting, is like this...
Today I find aggression is so important to a kind of vitality in the work ( as in Baselitz). It admits the urgency that smashes through refinement. Van Gogh, Appel, Munch, all have this quality of rough boldness, a kind of brutality, like a punch. This really is a primary principle in the creative process, the aggressive impulse. It’s in early Cézanne too, and Manet and early Monet.
Education
Byam Shaw School of Art,
London. 1986 - 1990
John Cass School of Art
City of London Polytechniic, London 1986 -1987
Foundation Studies in Fine and Applied Arts
Group Exhibitions
The Marmite Painting Prize 2008 (2nd Prize)
Studio 1.1 57a Redchurch Street London E2
Nov 2008
Piers Feetham Gallery,
London, July 2002
Stephen Bartley Gallery,
December 2000
The Spitz Gallery,
“Caught In The Act”, Spitlefields, London. Nov. 2000
Conductors’ Hallway,
Camberwell, London, July 1999
Coombes Contemporary,
London, Nov.1998
Hastings Museum and Art Gallery,
“On Reflection”, Hastings, Nov 1997
Collyer Bristow Gallery,
London, Oct. 1996
Boxfield Gallery,
Stevenage, Herts, April 1995
Steven Bartley Gallery,
London,June 1994, 1995, July 1997
Whiteleys, “Celebration”,
London, June 1993
Florence Trust,
London. June 1993
Chenil Galleries,
London, July 1990
Solo Exhibitions
Steven Bartley Gallery,
Old Church Street, London, Oct 1997
South Of The Border,
The Cut, London, July 1993
Residencies
The Florence Trust,
Highbury, London, 1992 - 1993
The Digswell Arts Trust,
Hertfordshire. 1994 - 1998
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