“Light moves across a landscape like the dancer moves through space, I am a painter of transient things”.  photo: Eric Alexander

David Cottingham is a London-based artist who has developed a unique body of work on the themes of Dance and Landscape Abstraction in the media of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture.

He has exhibited in New York, Chicago, London, Beirut and Rome. His work is also held in various private collections worldwide. The above photo shows the Dining Room at Contemporary Gallery for the “Made Visible” Exhibition 2017.

The artwork ranges from landscape-influenced, abstract paintings to large figurative, dance-inspired, works on canvas and Sculpture. Also limited edition prints and drawings in all media.

Artist Statement:

My paintings are abstracted improvisations on the two themes that most inspire me, the human body in motion and the spirit of place.

I try to evoke and capture the essence of these but the paintings are also adventures into unknown territories and I hope to create something unpredictable, beyond the subject. I like the work to evolve its own life and meaning, the main aim being to uncover ever deeper inherent structures, forms and emotions in the idea and by using the language of paint on canvas in a very spontaneous way, reveal unconscious worlds and possibilities.

My work has its roots in sculpture, which I originally studied. I apply the paint in a layered, almost carved way which then creates its own unique forms. The other primary technique I use is drawing, particularly in the Dance pieces, where fluid lines are used to delineate multiple movements. That approach combined with my other strand of more abstract painting and along with the colour ideas which it generated, gradually became fused into my current figurative style. The recent large scale, bolder, Dance work was then made possible by a move to my current London studio.

I now continue to work on these strands of painting and sculpture simultaneously as I find they inform each other and grow together. 

Recent Show “Made Visible”

Made Visible by David Cottingham from D Contemporary on Vimeo.

Made Visible New Paintings by David Cottingham: D Contemporary Gallery Mayfair, November 2017, Curated by Vanessa Clark of VCArt

“Dancing is Music Made Visible” George Balanchine

The paintings created for this show have a very particular history. My previous Dance-based work has been either on large wall length canvasses or much smaller drawings and mixed media works on paper.

When Vanessa and I were planning the work for these walls, we were determined to present the scope of the larger pieces at a smaller scale, but one that still captured the intensity and freedom of the larger life-size paintings.

To do this I returned in part to oil painting, which offered new possibilities both in fluidity of brush work and also, more importantly, the use of richer colour to denote space and volume. This gave a breakthrough for me to use my linear drawing style to express the movements and at the same time to use colour to overlay or obscure the ambiguous background areas.