Professional Member David Forster
Professional MemberDetails
| First Name | David |
| Last Name | Forster |
| Username | davidforster |
| Website | |
| Region | Edinburgh & The Lothians |
| Disciplines | Painting |
| Themes | Architecture, Environment, Landscape |
Statement
| Statement | ...we can never get at the nature of things from without. However much we may investigate, we obtain nothing but images and names. Schopenhauer, the World as Will and Representation. David Forster’s intensely wrought landscape paintings refer to the traditions of the 18th and 19th centuries. Though the scenes depicted are topographically correct, lighting and colour are altered to create a fictionalised reality, that nonetheless conveys the authority of photo realist document. By referring to older artistic traditions, the inheritance of narrative and emotional associations with landscape is evoked, and the importance of a romantic narrative of landscape is explored, one that tenaciously survives the knowledge of a more prosaic reality. Over several years, he has explored two main themes. Firstly a relationship with the Scottish landscape, always titled with quotes from Grimm’s Fairy tales, and secondly a collective memory of continental Europe, always titled with quotes from the Treaty of Rome. |
Biography
| Biography | Resume of art career David Forster SSA RSW was born in the village of Deddington in England in 1962. He is a self taught painter, having first earned a degree in biochemistry from York University in 1983. After beginning his exhibiting career in Bristol, England, he moved to Grenoble in France where he lived between 1993 and 1997, showing his work and developing his style. Since 1997 he has lived and worked in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is a professional member of the Society of Scottish Artists, and in 2014 became a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours. He also teaches painting widely, notably for the National galleries of Scotland, The Queen’s Gallery, Holyrood, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. He has been the winner of the following awards: 2001 John Grey Award, Royal Scottish society of Painters in Watercolour 2003 Edinburgh Arts Club Award, Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour 2005 Sunday Times Watercolour Competition, 2nd prize 2008 First Prize, Edinburgh Peoples Festival 2011 Russel Trust award, Visual Arts Scotland 2013 Sunday Times watercolour competition. 1st prize 2014 Ramsay Cornish Prize, Society of Scottish Artists 2015 Rendezvous Gallery Award, Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour 2018 W Gordon Smith and Mrs Jay Gordonsmith Award, RSW Open 2018 Glasgow Art Club Prize, VAS:SSA Open He is also held in the following collections: Abbey National Building Society, Bath Theatre Royal, Bath Bath Dean and Chapter for George Carey Wheelabrator Headquarters, Allevard-les-Bains, France
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