David Wise

Biographie

David Wise is a fine artist based in West Chiltington, West Sussex. 'A serious interest in Art developed while I was at grammar school in South London. Having achieved mediocre academic success, it was agreed my only chance of getting to university was by nurturing my artistic talents. I gained a place on one of the few Fine Art degree courses being offered at the time at Reading University. However, my stay at Reading was short lived and I transferred to Chelsea School of Art to take up a place on the Foundation course. A successful first year enabled me to transfer directly to the new David Wise is a fine artist based in West Chiltington, West Sussex.

'A serious interest in Art developed while I was at grammar school in South London. Having achieved mediocre academic success, it was agreed my only chance of getting to university was by nurturing my artistic talents.

I gained a place on one of the few Fine Art degree courses being offered at the time at Reading University. However, my stay at Reading was short lived and I transferred to Chelsea School of Art to take up a place on the Foundation course. A successful first year enabled me to transfer directly to the new degree programme.

Three years later I emerged from Chelsea with a good Honours Degree and decided it was time to earn some money. After a year as a youth worker, employed by the Greater London Council, I joined the Specialist Art Teacher training programme at Brighton University, there gaining qualified teacher status. Teaching became my vocation and for the next thirty years my focus was directed towards improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools, colleges, and universities at local, national, and international levels.

After ten years as an educational consultant, supporting aspiring teachers to take on leadership roles in challenging inner-city schools, I had created a financial cushion that enabled me to redirect my interest back into my Art. Having been out of the frame for so long I needed to find a way of deep emersion back into the subject. I decided I had to go back to University. Two years after joining the post graduate Fine Art programme at Chichester University I was awarded an MA in Fine Art.

Since then my ideas have slowly progressed, and a substantial body of work has emerged. Always seeking new directions, I have found interest in developing conceptual themes around time, space, and the consequence of change. What we perceive and how we perceive it. I have worked with abstract forms and found myself sometimes reverting to the figurative styles that developed when I was art school.

Painting has always been my main form of expression, but 3D structures, photography and film are also represented in my current portfolio.

As an aspiring schoolboy artist, I was inspired by the Post-Impressionists, especially the work of Van Gogh and the lifestyle of Gauguin.

A visit to Paris, when I was 17, provided the opportunity to view an exhibition of the work of Matisse at the Grand Palais. This gave me a sense of awe and wonder, which initiated a deep interest in art movements evolving in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.

Most recently I have been researching the work of the American Post-War Abstract Expressionists, and like them, continuing my search for an ultimate form of visual expression.' ...