David Wightman Art for Sale

David studied Painting at the Royal College of Art in London.

What inspires your work as an artist?

My work is influenced by colourful abstract artists (Josef Albers), a multitude of landscape painters (Caspar David Friedrich), and an even greater variety of landscape traditions (e.g. French Impressionism to Japanese ukiyo-e). As a result, colour and composition are the most important aspects of my work. Inventing my own landscapes – as opposed to portraying real places – is far more satisfying to me. This means I can be free to explore colour and form. I’m more interested in creating something beautiful than depicting reality.

What does your work mean to you?

I see my landscape paintings and prints as beautiful distractions. They function as abstract compositions as well as imaginary vistas. My work offers a glimpse of another world – seemingly real yet entirely fictional.

What techniques do you use?

I hand-cut hundreds of individual pieces of wallpaper to create the textured surfaces of my paintings. My collaging technique is similar to marquetry and is often mistaken as a lost Japanese craft – although I invented the technique myself. I developed this technique after finding a roll of wallpaper in a store room at art college. The pattern reminded me of my childhood home so I wanted to use it in my work. Years of experimentation have led to my signature style of carefully hand-cut and collaged wallpaper compositions. It’s difficult to explain the process but it involves hours of tracing, hundreds of surgical scalpels per painting, and many rolls of wallpaper! My prints are all based on the original drawings originally created for my paintings. Compositions can become paintings or prints and sometimes both. I see my prints as an accessible way into my work. They are explorations of colour and composition that complement my larger original paintings.