Xippas Geneva is very pleased to present a solo show by the English artist David Brian Smith. Entitled Walking in the air, the exhibition will bring together a new set of paintings made recently by the artist. The inauguration will take place during three days on March 18, 19 and 20 on the occasion of the joint opening of the galleries of the Quartier des Bains.

David Brian Smith’s figurative work is rooted in the pictorial tradition of landscape and portrait painting. The artist uses his family history and found images as springboards. His paintings depict a dreamlike world in a rich colour scheme and allude to a rural environment, to folklore and to myths.

David Brian Smith paints on herringbone linen. The rough texture of the canvas is reminiscent of traditional fabrics that inhabitants of the British countryside (where the artist hails from) used to wear.

His compositions are created through a slow and time-consuming process with successive touches of oil paint. Sometimes he inserts silver or gold leaf here and there. His paintings envelop us in a meditative, even spiritual atmosphere.

Smith’s work is interspersed with recurrent patterns and archetypical figures, such
as that of a solitary shepherd and a man sitting on a giant anthill, colonial hat in hand. The latter represents the artist’s grandfather, a clergyman and amateur photographer who lived in India in the colonial era. To quote art critic Amy Sherlock: “The shepherd seems to personify memory, symbolising a historical or imagined past.”

His references include Henri Rousseau, the gold leaf paintings of Gustav Klimt, Samuel Palmer and the British surrealist painters Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland.

David Brian Smith was born in Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom in 1981. He lives and works in London and studied at the University of Wolverhampton and the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. His work was featured in both solo and collective shows in galleries and institutions such as Albert Baronian gallery, Brussels; Carl Freedman gallery,
London; Wagdas Gallery, London; Galerie VidalCuglietta, Brussels; the Neue Froth Kunsthalle, Brighton; Cul de Sac, London; Weltraum, Munich; the Saatchi Gallery, London; Benderspace, London; Studio Voltaire, London; Susak, Croatia; Long and Ryle Gallery, London; House Gallery, London and the Eagleworks Gallery, Wolverhampton. David Brian Smith received the Creekside Open Award in 2013 and the Royal Academy Landscape Painting Award in 2005.

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