David Brian Smith (B. 1981)

From a farming background in Shropshire, David Brian Smith presents contemplative reflections on pastoral life in his landscape paintings, with an intriguing twist. His dreamlike works are rich with psychedelic colours: kaleidoscopic clouds float by in diamond skies, candy-coloured sheep graze in iridescent fields, and bowed, solitary figures stand amongst ethereal flora and fauna. In his 2011 painting My Soul Hath Them In Remembrance And Is Humbled In Me II, included in the Saatchi Gallery’s 2016 exhibition Painters’ Painters, Smith has inserted himself into his pop-coloured vision of British farmland. The painting is based on a photograph of the artist with his border collie in a field of sheep, in which wintry patches of snow are scattered across the crisp green grass and skeletal trees are silhouetted along the horizon. The image has been entirely transformed in Smith’s emotionally-charged and vibrant painting. Filled with swirling pools of colour, intricate patterns, and hazy warmth, the work evokes a powerful sense of nostalgia and loss in a time of increasing urbanisation.