back Eclipse David E Smith

• Eclipse
• My prime interest is in spatial configurations of pure form and colour. To heighten this, I employ a rigorous hard-edged geometry, eliminating any obvious signs of brushwork, while favouring an extended family of hues that includes cerulean blue, prism violet, eau-de-nil, pinks, teal, and, above all, black and white. There are two distinct types of work – the “static” or “inclusive”, and the “dynamic”. The painting “Interior” is one of the former, an enclosed space in which the forms are self-referential, locking into each other in ways that raise the question of exactly what is interior and what is exterior, and whether it is, in fact, no more than an arrangement of form and colour where the title is misleading. By contrast, one of my “black” paintings such as “Praxis” falls into the latter category. The strong diagonals and large partial forms are not bound by the picture frame, having the capability to extend virtually to infinity in some dark void. Lying somewhere between the two, “Black Grid” has the intersecting white strips that potentially continue beyond the frame, while at the same time are anchored by the blocks of purple, teal, blue and pink, static, immovable, unable to shift even a fraction without destroying the balance of the composition. Titles can be deceptive. “Skylight”, for example, might tease the viewer into seeing precisely that, but each “pane” is a different shade of blue, negating any sense of reality, while the forms that might be read as buildings are painted in unnatural colours, flat and lying as much on the picture plane as they are background. I work entirely in acrylic on canvas, most paintings to date being no larger than 76 x102cm. The work in the present collection is recent, dating between 2011 and 2013.

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• 2010
• 71 cm x 91 cm
• ASFA1661
• £1,450 (rent from £40)
• Buy for £1,450
• Rent from £40

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