Pictorial space and its illusory potential have always lured Peter Daverington: 'I was drawing every day as a child, it's what I loved to do,' he states. 'My father taught me to shade with a pencil and draw perspective. Ever since I have been tirelessly fascinated by illusionistic space and three dimensional depth. It's a simple pleasure that never abandoned me. I then became a graffiti artist when I was eleven and developed a lot of technique from using the spray can. Bright colour and fading are elements I have carried through in my work. I taught myself to use oil paints, they are so difficult and elusive, but that's what I love about them.'
Read MoreDaverington combines this love of image-making with a broad and deep knowledge of art history. Casting an eye across his canvases, the viewer sees a startling array of art historical lineages, which tumble together in nuanced and often surprising ways: 'I am interested in a kind of severe juxtaposition of visual languages,' he states. 'My compositions rely on this tension between hard-edge geometric line work and representational painting. I am primarily concerned with a pictorial space that was invented through the history of painting.'
Yet this interest in the different logics of pictorial space that have developed over centuries of art history is combined with a persistent interest in the contemporary: 'The evolution of art and its gradual development in representing three-dimensional space is a fascination of mine, which I study endlessly. l am, however, interested in trying to make paintings that are truly of the 21st century, yet also reach a long way back into the past.'
Excerpt from: The bewildering Spectacle by Phil Murray, Art Collector, Oct-Dec 2014
Text courtesy Boutwell Schabrowsky Gallery.
