Dave West is a full-time artist originally from South Wales living and working in Ireland since 1995.  He lives with his family in North County Dublin and works full-time as an artist and art educator.   His Fine Art practice changes and develops from year to year and has many strands but is always based around a core practice of painting from life, both in the studio and especially landscape painting ‘en plein air’.

He has exhibited widely in group exhibitions including exhibiting with many of the most prestigious societies and academies in Ireland and the UK.   In Ireland has been a regular exhibitor during the past decade at both the Royal Hibernian Academy and the Royal Ulster Academy in addition to being a member of the Dublin Painting and Sketching Club, the United Arts Club and an Open Access member of the Graphic Print Studio.

Dave maintains a strong link with the UK and in 2023 and 2024 he was selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in addition to being a regular exhibitor at the Royal Society of Oil Painters, The Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Society of Marine Artists, The New English Art Club and the Royal Cambrian Academy.

He regularly tutors at Plein-air painting events including both the ‘Dublin Plein Air’ and ‘Art in the Open’ festivals winning the Gold Mayoral Award in 2017 and a Silver prize in 2024. In 2023 he won first prize at ‘Paint out Norfolk’ in the UK.

This exhibition “Small Works”  is a collection of small-scale artworks that was born out of the artists daily habit of observational sketching and painting from life and comprises 3 strands: watercolour, oils and the printmaking process of mezzotint.

 

He frequently travels across Ireland and further into Europe seeking inspiration and subject matter. Tying all the artwork together is the artists continuing exploration of the landscape with a core part of his practice being a response to light and atmospheric effect. The works range from the coastal Italian areas of Cinqueterre and Venice with it’s intoxicating blend of water and decay to works from Holland and several paintings from time Dave spent on Lambay Island. Following in the footsteps of several well known 20th century artists such as Yeats, Sickert and Seurat Dave has painted live at Duffy’s Circus finding a rich source of material in the intensity of coloured light and action from the live performance.

 

Other works in the show are much more local in subject proving that inspiration can be found on one’s doorstep especially under nocturnal lighting conditions when a familiar scene can take on a completely different character. Far from being mere studies to base larger studio works on, these miniature works draw the viewer through their intimate scale and contain a unique energy of their own. Each artwork whether watercolour, oil or copperplate print represent the artists engagement and creative experiments with the material qualities of each unique medium, be it the light delicacy of Watercolour, the versatility of Oil or the unique ability of Mezzotint to convey mood through dark rich blacks and subtle shifts in tone.

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This exhibition will be on show in our Easter Snow Gallery from 2nd December - 14th January.

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This exhibition can be viewed online or in our Easter Snow Gallery open daily from 10-4.00 p.m. To make an enquiry, please contact Colette on 087 9697054 or email: info@tseac.ie