Easter egg-like clouds, glowing bands of sunrise colour, and vivid decorative patterns are just some of the elements...
ARTSCAPE
Easter egg-like clouds, glowing bands of sunrise colour, and vivid decorative patterns are just some of the elements that make up David Brian Smith’s dreamlike landscapes.
Smith grew up in rural Shropshire, and the agricultural traditions of his family and surroundings have had a strong influence on his work, especially after he moved to London. His paintings carry echoes of the British landscape tradition, particularly the Norwich School artists, a group of self-taught, working-class painters who formed their own art society in the early 1800s.
Yet Smith moves away from the more classical, academic styles of oil painting, instead creating images that feel “reimagined through a hallucinatory, technicolor lens,” says Ross + Kramer Gallery, which is hosting his solo exhibition ‘All around the Wrekin’. With sharp contrasts, rolling hills, farm buildings, and rounded trees, his work also brings to mind the slightly uncanny, pastoral scenes of American Regionalist painter Grant Wood (1891–1942).
“Rooted in the English pastoral tradition yet boldly contemporary in vision, Smith’s paintings explore ideas of place, belonging, and time through radiant colour, intricate brushwork, and layered symbolism,” the gallery explains. The exhibition title refers to the Wrekin, a cone-shaped hill in Shropshire known for its walking trails.
Across skies, fields, rivers, and woods, countless tiny hatch marks, flowers, stars, and recurring motifs animate the surface. Smith often uses gold and silver leaf as well, adding to the ethereal quality of his large, glowing canvases and drawing on the emotional power of colour and light to create a nostalgic, almost psychedelic sense of utopia.
