{"id":272638,"date":"2025-11-20T01:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T01:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/272638\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T01:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T01:26:10","slug":"pastoral-landscapes-brim-with-patterns-in-luminous-paintings-by-david-brian-smith-colossal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/272638\/","title":{"rendered":"Pastoral Landscapes Brim with Patterns in Luminous Paintings by David Brian Smith \u2014 Colossal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Easter egg-like clouds, glowing sunrise gradients, and myriad vibrant patterns are just a few of the elements comprising David Brian Smith<\/a>\u2019s otherworldly landscapes.<\/p>\n

Smith grew up in rural Shropshire, England, and his ancestral ties to the region\u2019s agricultural traditions became a major influence on his work after he relocated to London. His works evoke British landscape painting of the likes of the Norwich School<\/a> of painters, a group of self-taught, working-class artists who self-organized an art society in the early 19th century.<\/p>\n

\"an\u201cAll around the Wrekin\u201d (2025), oil on linen, 78 3\/4 x 70 7\/8 inches<\/p>\n

Smith departs from historically more academic styles of oil painting to create works \u201cre-envisioned through a hallucinatory, technicolor lens,\u201d says Ross + Kramer Gallery<\/a>, which presents the artist\u2019s solo exhibition, All around the Wrekin. In his starkly contrasted rolling hills, farm buildings, and bulbous trees, Smith also evokes the bucolic yet faintly uncanny paintings of American Regionalist artist Grant Wood<\/a> (1891-1942).<\/p>\n

\u201cRooted in the English pastoral tradition yet boldly contemporary in vision, Smith\u2019s paintings explore ideas of place, belonging, and time through radiant color, intricate brushwork, and layered symbolism,\u201d the gallery says. The title of the show references the name of a hill in Shropshire called the Wrekin, distinctive for its conical shape and a popular place to take walks.<\/p>\n

Within the sky, fields, rivers, and forests, hundreds of little hatch marks, flowers, starbursts, and other thematic motifs dance across the surface. He also often incorporates gold and silver leaf to add an even further ethereality to the large-scale, luminous canvases, tapping into the power of color and light to evoke nostalgia and a kind of psychedelic utopianism.<\/p>\n

All around the Wrekin continues through November 22 in San Francisco. Smith\u2019s work is also on view as part of Inner and Outer Worlds, an exhibition of international contemporary painting that runs through April 12 at the Ju Ming Museum<\/a> in Taiwan. See more on the artist\u2019s website<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"aDetail of \u201cAll around the Wrekin\u201d<\/p>\n

\"an\u201cJackfield\u201d (2025), oil and gold leaf on herringbone linen, 66 7\/8 x 55 1\/8 inches<\/p>\n

\"aDetail of \u201cJackfield\u201d<\/p>\n

\"an\u201cA Dragons Eye\u201d (2025), oil and gold leaf on herringbone linen, 82 5\/8 x 70 7\/8 inches<\/p>\n

\"aDetail of \u201cA Dragons Eye\u201d<\/p>\n

\"an\u201cA place of my heart\u201d (2025), oil on linen, 78 3\/4 x 70 7\/8 inches<\/p>\n

\"aDetail of \u201cAll around the Wrekin\u201d<\/p>\n

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