David Brightmore - Rhythms of Land and Figure

 

A former art teacher and designer, I gave up my ‘day job’- as Chief Executive of North Wales Housing Association [1985-2000], to concentrate on painting and music. I lived in the Snowdonia village of Rhyd-Ddu from 1985 until 2004, learned the Welsh language and have a close affinity with life in North Wales.

I have run and walked most of the mountains and hills of North Wales and though my paintings and drawings are rarely specific to one ‘recognisable’ place, they endeavour to express certain essential dramatic qualities of the Eryri environment and more recently the gentler, more lyrical landscape of the Clwydian hills and the urban life of Mold, Chester and Manchester.

Anyone who has been to North Wales will know the range of feelings that can emerge, whether stimulated by atmosphere, weather or just a very 'presence’. If all art is some form of ‘abstract expression’, then maybe mine is a search for the gestures of painting and drawing that relate to the experience of ‘being there’. I am told that my work is ‘vigorous and energetic’; certainly my response to the environment has been both physical and emotional and maybe this comes across.

I have held solo exhibitions in numerous North Wales venues such as;
Theatr Gwynedd, Theatr Clwyd Cymru, Wrexham Arts Centre, Oriel Corwen and at Oriel Plas Glyn y Weddw, Llanbedrog, where I was Chairman of the Board of Management for four years. I have also exhibited landscape work in a ‘Land’ exhibition at the Chapel Gallery, Ormskirk . at the ‘Art of England Show’ at Trentham Gardens, Stoke , at ‘ART Manchester’ at the Palace Hotel, at 'Love ARTS Manchester' and at venues in Chester.

I am currently involved with six artists in England and Scotland. Our group, all former colleagues at Sheffield College of Art, is called ‘Connections’ and we have had a series of exhibitions in Sheffield, London, North Wales and Glasgow.

I now live in Mold, which is just inside Wales and about 12 miles west of Chester and where, apart from playing my banjo and improving my Welsh language, I work on large charcoal and pastel drawings and acrylic and ink paintings. The opening of my home studio / gallery marks a significant step in relating to the town where we now live.

In the summers of 2006 and 2007 I completed 50 new works of landscape and urban scenes under the influence of my new environment, firstly for a solo exhibition at the Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Mold and then for subsequent exhibitions in North Wales and Manchester and for my 'open studio' weekends.