David Stubbs

Stillness: Paintings & Drawings From Life

Wilmington Hill from Beachy Head

When I began painting as a teenager growing up in Sussex I painted things that were accessible. These were what was outside my bedroom window and objects I had lying around my room. The view outside my window was the South Downs and the changing light, weather and seasons made it continually fascinating and enduring as a subject matter. I began going out into the landscape and painting plein-air and when indoors I ran out of objects to paint I began collecting pots and coloured fabrics. These two ways of working have endured and developed simultaneously and I have continued to work from both landscape and still life in equal measure. Continue reading “Stillness: Paintings & Drawings From Life”

Downland Landscapes

Downs Study from Beachy Head

This series of landscape works has been painted entirely on location. They are a direct response to what I saw and the experience of being in the landscape. I have always worked from direct observation and never seen the point of working away from the subject matter. That is because I do not paint pictures of things, I make studies. Continue reading “Downland Landscapes”

A Patch Of Order

Grey, white and blue on grey and pink

Drawing and painting is something I do in response to what I am seeing. This practice of working from direct observation was established in my youth. It was probably inherited from my mother, a flower painter and my grandmother, a figurative artist, and fuelled by visits to the National Gallery and subsequent juvenile attempts to replicate the realism of the Old Masters. It was the Dutch 17th century painters that had particularly caught my attention and I began using oil paint and developing an art practice by setting up still lives and going out into the landscape. Continue reading “A Patch Of Order”

Recent Etchings

I learned how to do etching from Bartolomeu dos Santos when I was a student at the Slade School of Fine Art in the late 1970’s. After I had graduated, no longer having easy access to a print room and a shortage of funds meant I had to improvise equipment in order to carry on printmaking. I developed my own way of applying aquatint and a converted mangle gave me rough working proofs for a couple of years. The search for part time teaching work took me to the Northeast of England, where I immediately became a member of Charlotte Press in Newcastle. There I had open access to a well-equipped print room and could further develop my technique and produce editions. Continue reading “Recent Etchings”

Near Beachy Head

This series of landscape studies has been painted entirely on location. They are all painted from the same viewpoint near Beachy Head in East Sussex and are sections selected from the panoramic view. They are a direct response to what I saw and the experience of being in the landscape. Continue reading “Near Beachy Head”