ATIM’S TOP 60 MASTERS OF CONTEMPORARY ART
DAVID W. WHITFIELD
Born in an age foreign to the present one in the North East of England, attending Sunderland College of Art, before eventually gaining employment in a Land Surveying Company in Manchester. This allowed me to earn a living and keep my artistic independance ,free from any commercial constraints. Through surveying I worked in Saudi Arabia, Africa ( Sudan, Libya and Nigeria), also briefly in Switzerland.Observing the customs and cultures of these various countries uncosciously helped form a philosophical approach to society which , the ideas of which seeped eventually into my art work.After some years my career changed course to move into the area of Mental Health where I qualified as a Psychiatric Nurse, which further gave me an even greater insight into the human psyche, always an area of interest and fascination.After approximately twenty years in this type of work I took early retirement and later moved permanently to France to concentrate on painting full time. The experience of life colours your outlook, your thoughts, ideas, philosophy, religious and political ideology etc., projecting these into an overall personal philosophical ideology.These, with variations are unique to the individual and consequently their response to any given situation within society will be reflected and governed by this personal philosophy.Consequently this approach will also be experienced in their response to art and any visual image ; and it is upon this premise that my work is not titled.If so to do , would then stifle any other interpretation which would correspond to the viewers own life experience being different to my own. I have broad themes and concepts to which I adhere to and then change and then may return to , and attempting to work in an intuitive way as much as possible, it would be extremely difficult to explain these themes which I believe would be a waste of time anyway.It would be an explanation in words of an explanation in visual form of an impression of a perception of various thoughts and ideas. However having said all this I realize that a little overall general ‘hint’ at the theme of the work helps to start the viewer into the journey of experiencing the painting. My interest is obviously in people, their reactions,-outwardly but more importantly inwardly and hidden- and inner psychological interpretations of unfolding events at any instant.Power and manipulation is a theme that weaves itself in and out of my work constantly. The difficulty for me is my attempt to produce a painting which can stand as a work of art, rather than a picture ; an archetypal image that encapsulates the instant and goes beyond journalism, illustration and fashion. But only the viewer will decide if this goal has ever been reached. Email: david.whitfield@orange.fr
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