David Howell’s work is inspired by the diverse and fascinating landscapes which surround us. His paintings are densely layered and employ rich, colourful, tactile paint handling techniques giving rise to complex, textural surfaces that address notions of space, monumentality and scale.
“Through painting I'm investigating ideas concerning "landscape", its historic, artistic legacy in the Romantic Tradition and the relevance today of "nature", "beauty" and our ever changing relationship with the natural environment. I'm interested in how perceptions of both nature and landscape have been shaped through time. How we experience landscape in its physical sense, how we record it visually through maps, photography and the painted image, and the resulting effect this has on our psyche, are all areas that are under constant review.
I'm interested in the organic, in change through process and the metamorphosis of form. When making paintings I work through stages, methods of layering, sometimes in a physical sense through the actual application of paint and working methodology, always in a referential sense as multiple sources combine and often collide as the work evolves”.