London-based artist and journalist David Brett creates bold, energetic abstract landscape paintings, taking inspiration from the natural and urban environments. His work concerns the landscape as a personal space through which he seeks to explore themes of society, self and change.
With colour, form and movement at its foundation, his interest is in creating a visual environment that lets often competing messages sit together and interact — the emotional and intellectual, the written word and painted image. His current work seeks to reprocess the 27 years he spent as a journalist in the newsroom at the London Evening Standard. Formed from layers of mixed-media collage, his work examines the noise of constant (often quite negative) information present in society and juxtaposes it with vibrant explorations of feelings.
In deconstructing and piecing back together his time as a journalist — employing collaged newspaper cuttings from stories he has either written or edited — he is replicating his former role in deciding what makes it to the canvas. His work has been exhibited internationally and is also in collections worldwide.