David Price: The Close of the Silver Age

David Price
The Close of the Silver Age
17 May – 23 June, 2012

The gothic-pastoral landscapes which David Price paints so meticulously reveal scenes populated by characters, be they demons or saints, set in a luminous world of clearly defined narrative elements. These become recognizable yet remain ambiguous or even nonsensical.

This new body of work engages with the concept of discernable metaphysical ages – from the splendor of the golden age to the decay and chaos of the silver age – a rich topic explored throughout post-renaissance western art, and taken up here with Price's customary wit and bold compositional vision.

Price's engagement with Renaissance artists - innovative printmakers such as Durer, Altdorfer and Breughel - is at once evident in his painstakingly laid down slivers of line and colour. He is himself a skilled etcher and his alluring paintings offer a window onto compositions that are strangely ordered, with an edgy, mutable, timeless beauty.

David Price studied at Edinburgh College of Art before completing two MA's at Newcastle (fine art) and the Royal College of Art (printmaking). He was selected for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2009, and first showed with Art First in 2010.