Our next artist, David Caines will take over the salon on 30 September. On Sunday 30 September 5:30-8:30pm we will host David’s opening private view of his show called Uneasy.
David says about his work:
The process I go through to make my figurative paintings involves finding and sifting through hundreds of early photographs, silent film stills, medical books and museum catalogues. I look for faces and bodies that speak to me and evoke a precise atmosphere. Once chosen, I chop up and mix these characters, and bring them together in the paintings in carefully arranged groupings. They are anxious and ambiguous encounters. The aim is to invoke feelings of foreboding, melancholy and unease in the viewer.
The images sit outside of a recognisable time-frame and often represent unlikely groups of curious and seemingly unrelated characters (a shaman, a figure wrapped in polythene, masked children, contortionists). Their stories are unclear. Are they welcoming committee or assassins? Entertainers or sorcerers? It’s left to the viewer to conjure the narrative.
Originaly from Wakefield, Yorkshire. My art education was at Chelsea College of Art & Design in the 1980s. In 1994 I had a well-received one-man debut show of paintings at the Tabernacle Gallery in Notting Hill.
In 2005, after a 16 year distraction working as Art Director and Creative Director at various design agencies, I started to paint seriously again, and in 2008 left full time employment to focus on painting.
Since 2008 I have exhibited regularly in London, and I sell work to private collectors.
Recently I’ve begun to curate group shows under the SALON16 banner, and in 2009 turned my house in North London into a gallery and opened it to the public.
In September 2010 I curated the exhibition ‘Ordinary Monsters’ in Brick Lane, London.
In 2011 I had a solo show of paintings, ‘Supersingular’, at BHVU, London
“David’s paintings often represent groups of seemingly disparate people… who seem unaware of each other, don’t relate to one another, yet share a space on the canvas. I heard someone describe the work as poignant just now and I think that’s true… without wanting to get too deep, it seems like a comment on the human condition, that in the end we’re all alone.” Simone Pereira Hind
