I am thrilled to present my new body of work “Art in Motion” at the Hyde Gallery.
Particularly as this wonderful gallery gives a chance for me to connect to my local audience and also offers me a rare opportunity to reveal the inspiration behind this exciting new “Mythology”series and say something of the working methods involved.
I set out to combine my two distinct styles of painting, the figurative dance pieces with the abstract colour paintings and I hope you will enjoy the results. I look forward to meeting you there.
David Cottingham is a London-based artist who has developed a unique body of work on the themes of Dance and Landscape Abstraction in the media of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture. David studied at St Martins School of Art, London, under Philip King RA, William Tucker and Sir Anthony Caro. He has exhibited international including New York, Chicago, London, Beirut and Rome. His work is also held in various private collections worldwide.
“Mythologies” A new Dance Painting Series
In this new series of works I set out to combine my two distinct styles of painting, the figurative dance pieces and the abstract colour paintings. The drawing based, linear, improvisational style which I created to express the dance movements has always been a fluid work in progress. With this new series, based on the ancient goddess mythologies, I have used a sculptural underpainting technique to delineate the figure and by carving the paint over this and spreading colour around the dancer’s form.
This gives exciting possibilities to express both movement of a body into areas of light and colour but also to increase the emotional range as expressed by the music, the dancer and the mythological narrative. The results are an exciting new way for me to express the internal and external space through which the dancer moves.
I hope you enjoy the results and I also wanted to thank my wonderful dancers for their tireless creative collaboration on this project.
