David O'Connor FRSA

David was born on the Wirral peninsular. As a teenager, he walked, drew and painted the landscape from the Dee Estuary to Birkenhead Docks. He found inspiration from Van Gogh, Constable, Cotman and Cox. At an early age, David was drawn to conceptual art; particularly Duchamp. He pursued this at Art College making very experimental performances, film, installation and sculpture. Landscape was still a central theme.  

David's studio is in the Wylye Valley village of Heytesbury where he has lived for 30 years. He came to Wiltshire to discover the world created by the painter Paul Nash and, inspired by his work, has begun to create my own Wiltshire. He told us, "I first saw Nash’s work in my school 6^th form library on the Wirral and fell in love with his photographs and paintings of the rolling chalk downland and ridges topped with Bronze Age Barrows and Beech wood clumps. His photographs of the Avenue at Avebury captured the depth of antiquity in a landscape I just had to be in. I got so immersed in Nash’s world I am still not sure whether I am in my world or occupying his."

The colours in David's work are bold and striking, attempting to capture the memory of sun-drenched summer walks across the plain, along the Ridgeway to Avebury, across the undiscovered West Wiltshire Downs and down the Wylye Valley. This ancient and mystical landscape is now overlaid with the geometry of modern farming however the past is not far from the surface. As David walks he collects Neolithic flint tools and is struck by the awareness that he is walking the same soil as the people who built Stonehenge.

Colour and pattern are what excites David as he tries to create a balance between what he sees, what he recollects and the wish to construct something more than simple representation. There is always a tension between the flatness of the canvas and representation. He has been exploring combining aerial perspective with topographical views.