David Snook

Artistic background

From an early age, art played a central role in his life. Growing up in a farming community on the borders of Devon and Cornwall in the
beautiful Tamar Valley, his love of painting evolved. After his formal education he studied technical illustration which led to a
job opportunity six thousand miles away in Cape Town. He ran a successful art studio for 25 years and loved Southern Africa and all its
diversities and of course the abundant wildlife.
In 2003 he returned to his roots, a few miles up the road from where he was born, and with brush in hand set about capturing the local landscapes with renewed vigour and a new way of 'seeing' his surroundings. He works in oils transcribing the rugged moorlands and coastlines into his own textured style. His scenes are designed around a limited palette with rich cadmium undertones showing through to accentuate a depth of quality.
He believes figure drawing to be the cornerstone of art, and breathes a freshness into all aspects of painting, it provides a loose spontanious flair to his otherwise rigid technical style which underpins his initial drawings. He is captivated and drawn to the human form, which he reveals from semi-abstract backgrounds, his painter's marks providing a brief glimpse of torso then back to the geometry of the light encompassing them. He is fascinated, like many artists, by light, where the pen-umbra of a shadow disappears into the background or by the soft edges and hard lines that define his subject.
When the climate permits he can be seen painting 'en plein air' even when his subject matter is different from the view in front of his easel.
Most of his work is produced with water mixable oil paints, a revolution indeed, doing away with turps and difficult cleaning routines and above all drying times cut in half.