Artist of the Week / HSoA Tutor David Caldwell

"An enthusiastic and skilled mentor, David's approach to art teaching underpins the passionate desire to give every student endless possibilities - no ceilings, no limitations, no boundaries; enabling them to get personally creative within the art learning experience." Isabel H Langtry, HSoA Principal

David tells us about his work, inspiration and what teaching means to him.

David, please tell us a little about yourself.

I find drawing and painting really an adventure. It is a way of life - continuous, accumulative, testing, rewarding and unpredictable. I paint from life, which on the one hand is a limitation, on the other offers infinite possibilities. I love the ‘magic’ of recreating space, light, colour and form onto a 2-dimensional surface. But painting for me is not just illusionism - the depiction of the subject is not everything. I am equally driven by the abstract concerns of picture-making -composition, the rhythm and relationships of the brush marks, of the colours, of the values. A painting has its own rules and it’s own language which are distinct from the laws of nature say.

What inspires you and your work?

I am inspired by the visual world. My subjects range from portraiture to still-life to landscape. I am inspired by artists throughput art history, too numerous to list here, but perhaps what they all have in common is a feel for the paint - ‘painterly’ you might say. Velazquez, Cezanne, Titian, Rembrandt, Bonnard, Morandi to name but a few.

What does teaching mean to you?

Teaching for me is a real privilege. I am passionate about my subject so really it is my pleasure to teach it. Being a painter is an otherwise fairly solitary vocation. Teaching offers the opportunity to verbalise ideas and theories, and to impart the accumulated knowledge gained through experience.

And finally, could you tell us what you think about the learning environment at HSoA?

It's ideal - it is relaxed but serious, sociable but industrious. The class sizes are intimate enough to allow plenty of one-to-one tuition.

Join David's weekly Drawing & Painting - Thinking Like an Artist classes on Monday mornings or Monday afternoon.