My paintings are about experiencing and responding to the places I encounter. This is often achieved by spending periods of time in a landscape and looking and working directly from it. During the course of a painting many things change. First responses and ideas are superseded as I witness the landscape transforming under different lighting and weather conditions. Greater freedom and confidence grows with the time and experience spent in it. As I try to capture these elements, I do so in a way that allows paint and colour to be used in an expressive and gestural manner. My recent paintings reflect the changing qualities of light and weather and say something of the grandeur and beauty I experienced in the various places I visited.
David Atkins was born in Greenwich, London in 1964. He studied painting at St Martins School of Art, London and Winchester School of Art gaining a 1st Class Honours Degree in painting.
After leaving college he returned to London, where he taught part time and continued painting. He exhibits regularly throughout the UK and in 1999 began showing at the Albemarle Gallery in London, with his first solo show in 2002. He has been awarded numerous prizes including the Horan prize for Painting at the NEAC Exhibition in London and the Façade International Prize for Painting at the Discerning Eye Exhibition in London. He was recently awarded the Baltic Exchange Prize 2018 for painting in the RMSA Exhibition at the Mall Galleries London.
He now lives and works in Dorset.UK
‘David Atkins has established himself as an evocative painter of landscapes and, particularly, of the urban scene. His is a broad brush, the sweep and colour of it bold and clear, and he brings to the city the eye for transitory light and temperature and atmosphere that is more usually applied to rural landscape. With him we explore cities, not always in the bright clear Kodak light of the Canaletto imitator, but at dawn and sunset and often in the damp truth of autumn and the tenebrous contrasts of the street at night; his is the sometimes sceptical eye of the honest observer, seeing London and Dublin, New York and Barcelona, as we have all experienced them’.
Brian Sewell (1931-2015), Art Critic
1982-1983 St Martins School of Art, London. Foundation Course
1983-1986 Winchester School of Art (BA Fine Art Honors Degree, First Class: Painting)
1993-1995 PGCE Post Compulsory Education.
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SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2018 'Light of Day' Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire. ‘All Weathers’ McAllister Thomas Gallery Surrey.
2017 Ashdown and Beyond Fairfax Gallery Tunbridge Wells
Rivers, Rocks and Mountains McAllister Thomas Gallery
2016 Land, Sea and Sky Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire.
Fairfax Gallery, Norfolk
McAllister Thomas Gallery, Surrey
2015 ‘A Slight Chance of Rain’. Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire.
Shared Journey’s McAllister Thomas Gallery,Surrey
2014 ‘Weather and Light. On a Journey with Turner’, Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire
McAllister Thomas Gallery, Surrey
Fairfax Gallery, Norfolk
2013 ‘London Life’, Albemarle Gallery, London
‘Under English Skies’, Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire
‘Devon and Cornwall’, McAllister Thomas Gallery
2012 McAllister Thomas Gallery, Surrey
Fairfax Gallery, Tunbridge Wells
Red Rag Gallery, Bath
2011 ‘A Journey in Two Cities’, Campden Gallery
McAllister Thomas Gallery, Surrey
Fairfax Gallery, Norfolk
2010 ‘Venice’ Albemarle Gallery, London
Fairfax Gallery, Tunbridge Wells
2009 ‘Land and City Light’, Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire
Fairfax Gallery, Norfolk
Sarah Wiseman Gallery, Oxford
2008 Albemarle Gallery, London
2007 Fairfax Gallery, Norfolk
2006 Albemarle Gallery, London
2005 Stables Gallery, Northern Ireland
Fairfax Gallery, Norfolk
2004 Albemarle Gallery, London
2003 Fairfax Gallery, Tunbridge Wells
Fairfax Gallery, Norfolk
2002 Albemarle Gallery, London
2001 The White Gallery, Brighton
1991 Tall House Gallery, London
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2018 RMSA Exhibition Mall Galleries London
ROI Exhibition Mall Galleries London
2016 Sladers Yard Dorset
2015 Anniversary Exhibiiton. Fairfax Gallery, Tunbridge Wells
Paintings of Oxford Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire.
2013 The Art of Making. Bournemouth University
2012 ‘AQUEOUS’. Albemarle Gallery . London
Courcoux and Courcoux, Hampshire
1994- 2011 ‘Site Unseen’, Olympic Delivery Authority London
McAllister Thomas Gallery, Surrey
Red Rag Gallery, Bath
Albany Gallery, Cardiff
Courcoux and Courcoux, Hampshire
Fairfax Gallery. Tunbridge Wells
Sarah Wiseman Gallery, Oxford
Beaux Arts, Bath
Campden Gallery, Gloucester
Stables Gallery Ireland
Laing Landscape Exhibition, London,
Landmark. A Survey of British Landscape Painting, Bournemouth University
Offer Waterman Fine Art London