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David Nash Edmonton Art Club |
| I was born in 1937 in Bethnal Green, an inner-city district of London, England. I think my earliest memory is from 1940: Painting in the back-yard of suburban London house to which were displaced by the "Blitz". For me, painting is more than an activity. It is an integral part of what I have always been. |
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There was a career tug-of-war: Science or Art? I won out. I became a Geneticist and remained a painter. I painted in oils from my early teens until my mid-twenties. Around the time I moved to Canada (in 1965) I switched to acrylics. The delicious treat of raising children is the only one of many potential distractions that actually stopped me painting, during the late 70's. I have been back at it now for nearly twenty five years, working almost exclusively in gouache. I paint what I want. Most of my work is landscape, albeit often highly abstracted. I am neither a scholarly nor a schooled painter. It never occurs to me to ask myself what I am trying to achieve. I know I am influenced by other artists, for looking at art is practically an addiction. However, when painting, I never consciously invoke the image of the works or the techniques of others. I am intent on what the paint is doing on the paper. I generally work indoors from sketches made in the field. A work is done for me when it generates two personal, unquantifiable sensations. One is the perception of "successful" design; the marks I have made on the paper must satisfy me as an object. The other is the feeling of the presence of the spirit of the subject (be it place or person or object or mood) in the painting. This latter is an almost alarming sensation, I suspect akin to what others identify as the presence of god. |
 Dancing Trees gouache on paper |
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