David Whitworth

Conversations with Leaves

1 – 12 February 2023

Meet the Artist and Artist Talk:
Saturday 4th February 2023, 3 – 4 pm
Georgina Reid, founding editor and publisher of Wonderground (formerly The Planthunter), will host a one-on-one chat to unpack David Whitworth’s approach and ideas.

Catalogue & Price List:
View PDF Catalogue

‘Conversations with Leaves’ VIEWING ROOM

Saint Cloche warmly welcomes back David Whitworth, an emerging artist based in Sydney with a second solo show – ‘Conversations with Leaves’.

David uses the genre of landscape painting to delve deeply into intersecting spheres of normally overlooked snippets of life and he expresses this through his works.

The art of noticing everyday vignettes we often take for granted become moments of focus, an exercise in rewarding curiosity, part of the practice of paying attention.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

After completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts majoring in painting at the National Art School in 2006 and Honours at Sydney College of the Arts in 2009, David went on to study and become a Landscape Architect. The two vocations offering complementary viewpoints on a single subject of interest – the relationship between people and place.

Settling on a subject for painting can be tricky. Often what I choose to paint is a subject that keeps a door open towards a particular interest, a composition, a colour, a memory.

It’s funny to paint so many trees.  As a landscape architect I spend a lot of time thinking about trees, and I love them. In painting, trees play a different role – they aren’t necessarily the subject themselves.

I’m interested in things that speak to the sky – the banal, muddy intermediaries.  Leaves, in their translucency, manage to make the qualities of light tangible. Fields survive in clearings, puddles catch clouds.  

It’s a way of approaching something sublime via something ordinary.

– David Whitworth