Working in portraiture, painting freehand, using only spray paint and without the aid of brushes David has developed a signature multi-layered style. Incorporating both sophisticated and dumb mark making he creates countless scrawled lines and abstract areas that weave through clashing colours, translucent drips and decaying letterforms, the results are visually rich portraits that fuse photo realism, abstraction and graffiti art sensibilities with a raw energy that comes from the medium.

His work is Exhibited in the UK and Internationally and aims to challenge preconceptions about fine art and urban art painting within the gallery confines and the public domain.

Over recent years David has shown work in Berlin, Hong Kong, LA, Lisbon, London, New York and Paris amongst others and his paintings have been shown alongside the leading figures in the urban contemporary and street art movement.

Please tell us about any concepts/themes in your exhibit you would like to convey
The title of the show ‘Shake Your Skin Loose’ and the work itself represent ‘Shifts’ that have occurred in many aspects of my private life and my practice. I think if you’re lucky or unlucky depending on your mindset, you reach a point in your life where you realize that you are not only the product of your wants, beliefs, environment and upbringing, that the person you have constructed along with all the stupid shit you do that makes your own life harder, with work can be reckoned with. If we choose, we can be other selves.
The work is a result of the need to break free from habitual behaviors, develop my painting and thought process and move my aesthetic and head into a new space.

In the age of social media where the treatment of others is inhuman at times and the currency is judgement done in a millisecond: Like/Dislike, Left/Right, Us/Them – I feel like portraiture and painting or ‘slow media’ is becoming more vital. A good painting can elevate its subject, command inspection, ask questions of the viewer. This in turn can be amplified by the gallery environment and in the context of a large scale mural sometimes even more so, the context of the paintings also put people in real life social situations and physical spaces. Essentially I paint the people around me and then take them somewhere else to show others, its a simple act.

Tell us a bit about your career, school, city, ideas, etc
I was born in London, England, I grew up on the South East coast, drawing, skateboarding and fighting off the town folk.
I trained in college as an illustrator and graphic designer, my first commercial work was t-shirt designs for the band The Prodigy.
I started my own graphic business – A street wear label in 2000 called ’Subsurface’ which sold in the Uk, Europe, Australia and Japan. After a successful 5 years, a bad partnership deal forced me to fold the label, l moved back to London and started focusing on making art again.In 2008, I showed my first portrait paintings in a group show at the Tacheles Gallery in Berlin and painted my first mural at ‘Banksy’s Cans Festival 2’ in London – Since then I haven’t stopped. When I first started, the portraits I saw on walls were all very smooth and airbrush like, I wanted to use vandal like mark making with classical portraiture I liked the idea of blurring the lines between street/graffiti and fine art painting, because I hadn’t seen before.

What are you trying to covey through this body of work?
Even when a person is sitting completely still or asleep, there is all this activity going on inside – Blood and thoughts are rushing through us, our external view of someone in this stillness is a different universe from the person within it. I think most of my paintings in the past touched on this idea, but now I am finding a new visual language to express it. The process I use makes the paint difficult to control, the mark making is often fluid and hues vibrate against each other organically. This brings movement to the portrait, to contrast and emphasize this I put my subjects in voids of color and stillness. The voids are a significant new element to the work, previously I wanted to cover every inch of canvas with information and not relying on that visual tool allows the portraits to breathe, adding a new visual dynamic.

What types of materials do you use?
For this work I’m working with different types of spray paint, gloss paint enamel and acrylics.

How many hours do your pieces generally take to complete/info about your process, etc
I’ve spent quite some time getting this new process locked in with just the right alchemy that the paints works with each other, so I’m reluctant to reveal much about the process. I put this show together over a 5 month period..

What is the significance of the people in your paintings?
Its geographical really, they are the people around me at any given time, wherever I happen to be. I have a bad memory and rarely take photographs, so the paintings for me are becoming some kind of diary. They spark memories of people and places I’ve traveled – Different studios and struggles. The great thing about portraiture wherever you are you can find someone to paint.

What is more important – Content or technique?
I think it depends on what kind of art you are making, I like to write so for me personally there are more precise ways to convey a narrative than painting, I’m interested in creating work with a more immediate emotional response. Like when you hear a great song for the first time – You may not know the band or what they look like, where they are from, the era, the type of instruments they play or even understand the lyrics – But you just know its a great fucking song and sometimes that’s enough.

Your work on the streets to your work in a gallery/canvas translates very well, what are the challenges/goals/etc you find working this way?
Until around two years ago I used exactly the same technique for the murals and the canvases, only spray paint. This was integral to the idea of the work, to question this notion of what is ‘real painting’. People judge you and your work very differently depending on the context, gallery walls, public walls, urban art gallery, contemporary art galley, you are a vandal, you are just a fucking street artist, you are a real artist etc.
I liked the idea that work was essentially the same in all contexts yet peoples views changed depending on the context.

What is currently influencing you that might surprise people?
Sobriety!

What are some of the responses you hear in regards to your work?
I hear ‘beautiful’ quite often and I’ll take it.

Describe your work environment – Music, TV, Movies, things you drink/smoke, time of day etc
I move studios quite frequently, short leases, so I generally only have the essentials, materials, coffee, music and the few art books I still own (I gave up carting books around). In busy periods I’m at the studio six days a week, sometimes the early shift, sometime the late. We have no internet (on purpose) and there is nothing of note close by, so no distractions. I think the building used to be apartments for the workers at the water plant close by. I share the space with two other artists Base 23 and Boa One, it’s cool to have artists around you that are coming from different areas to talk about painting with.

If you could choose only one, would you rather be thought of as a great artist or a nice person?
If you look at artists in retrospect it doesn’t seem to me that being a nice person counts for that much in the art world.
But I’ve met a few great artists and they were nice people, maybe it’s outdated that arrogance and success have to be bedfellows, even though I have witnessed people on all sides feeding this stereotype – What about ‘nice artist?’

CONTEXT Art Miami
December 2017

CONTEXT Art New York
May 2017