David W Young Artist - latest news and blog

latest news & blog

Welcome to the page where I will try to keep you updated on my latest work and give a little insight in to what is going on in my recent thoughts and musings.

David Young in his studio

Painting of River Meavy, Norsworthy, Dartmoor

17th August 2008

The exhibition that I have been working for is gradually drawing closer. It is supposed to be taking place at the Mayne Gallery in Kingsbridge from mid October. An awful lot of work is involved apart from the actual painting. Scanning of paintings and writing of text (all for pre show publicity), varnishing of paintings and some hard work in framing them especially the larger pictures.

I have started the scanning while continuing to work on the remaining paintings. There is a real mixture of paintings of all different shapes and sizes with a wide variation in subject matter.

I should be really excited about this body of work that is coming together, but I am keeping my sensible hat on knowing that anything from sell out to nothing at all could happen in these uncertain times. I think the hardest thing to bear when holding an exhibition is if there is little positive feedback.

Up to two years of isolation in a very personal world ends with a very public examination of the persons efforts. It can be awfully soul destroying if it ends in indifference or criticism.

What I must keep in mind is that I have spent these last couple of years being incredibly critical of myself and have finished the paintings with a degree of satisfaction. I am the hardest critic of all.

Off on another subject. Despite the awful July and August weather the pair of swallows that are nesting in the dog kennel have successfully raised a second brood of five youngsters that have just flown the nest. So that is now seven in all for this summer.

7th July 2008

"weary of trickery and fraud,grey slates remain grey slates - floods as required. And another tree dies of shame"

Today I was digging out an old compost heap when I saw two large pairs of feet emerging out of the side, and then another pair. Two baby moles emerged from my disturbance. They were silver grey, the coats not grown, and with pink legs and snouts. Confused they kept digging out into the open despite my efforts to return them to the soil. Eventually, after covering them with soil things seemed to settle. All I could hope was that mother would find them and suckle them.

A couple of hours later I find them laying astride the wall of the compost heap, dying of hypothermia, both facing uphill as in a grotesque cruxifiction.

I put them in my hand to feel the warmth and life ebbing out of them. I returned them to the soil and cover them with as much earth as possible. Their grave I fear.

As I write this they are probably at the moment of death. I'm sitting in a warm room at a bloody computer. Bollocks to it all.

...........................................next day......................

8th July 2008

After a bad night still hating myself for the young moles demise, I cautiously pull back the soil on the compost heap to find out the fate of the moles. No moles, but a hole leading away into the heart of the heap. It seems I saved them just in time for the warmth of their bodies had all but ebbed away.

You know, what comes out of this is how ignorant we are all are about virtually anything to do with our fellow living things. When I saw those little moles emerge my mind raced - what do I do ? Are they still being suckled? Where is the nest? Is mother nearby? Shall I cover them with soil?

In reality I knew nothing.

New !

Wheal Betsy Engine House.

Mary Tavy, Dartmoor

I have just released a print of the only surviving engine house still standing on the moor.

The picture shows the site of the old lead & silver mine amid the hills and valleys of west

Devon. I painted it during late summer when the grasses have turned and the heathers are in flower.

The print is a limited edition of 350, available in a variety of frames and can be bought from all the galleries that sell my work. It will shortly be available on this site when it is updated.

The size of the framed print is approximately 21 X 16 inches, is hand signed and numbered and ready to hang. The picture has been affordably priced at £83.

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Swincombe Farm Lane, Dartmoor

Also I have released a limited edition print of a painting I did a few years ago of the lane that runs through the derilict remains of Swincombe farm which is in the heart of Dartmoor. I have not yet got it on the Prints page because that will be in the hands of my genius web designer, but it is already on sale both at the Forest Inn , Hexworthy and Yelverton Paperweight Centre. Other galleries will follow in the near future. If you need any help in obtaining a copy send me an e mail on info@davidwyoung.co.uk and I will do everything to help. The framed picture is about 21 X 16 inches and retails at £83.

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The Garjia Devi temple, river Kosi flood plain, near Nainital - Himalayan foothills, India.

I thought it was time to mention why there is a painting of an Indian temple in my porfolio of paintings. It has to to do with the fact that I'm a bit of an Indophile. Over the years I have travelled quite a few times to India. Thanks largely to a rather remarkable English women who has an intimate knowledge and love of the country I was privileged to ride and discover large parts of this stunning and enigmatic land.

Over the years I have completed some very large projects from my Indian days ( now heart breakingly in the past due to my commitment to never fly again). The Garjia Devi temple is one such project. This temple, which sits on a huge rock covered in vegetation on a flood plain below the Himalayan foothill station of Nainital, attracts thousands of pilgrims every year. I have been lucky to visit it on a few occasions when passing through on horseback to Nainital.

To do justice to this truly magnificent panorama I decided the painting had to be on a similar scale. It ended up being over six feet wide but though taking more months than I wish to count in completion creates a painting that I feel takes your breath away.

By painting on this scale I feel I have done justice to the cameos in the painting such as the women faggot carriers returning from the hills, the pilgrims crossing the hand made bridge, and of course the detail that needed to be put into forested foothills.

n.b. If you are interested in my Indian works please contact me via e mail on my 'contacts' page.

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The other week I was looking through my bookcase and I happened upon a book that I bought back in 1972. It is called ONLY ONE EARTH, The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet and was published for a conference by the United Nations on the human environment in June 1972. What was remarkable was how much is still relevant today, how much has come to pass and depressingly how little has been acted upon. One interesting chapter concerns population growth and how it was then considered such a worry. The predictions have been fairly accurate, but this pressing problem, especialy in the now urgent concern of individual carbon footprints is now off the political agenda.

For me, the most astonishing chapter was at the end of the book. Here it dwelt on possible future problems, and to my great suprise the subject of Carbon and the greenhouse affect reared its head - this report I repeat was back in 1972 - 35 years ago! In it they mention the now much vaunted 2 degree tipping point and a likely 0.5 degree increase in temperature by the year 2000. And they were RIGHT!!

Although this book was fascinating it has left me with a rather bad sense of forboding. It seems that if the latest predictions are correct, we only have a handful of years to slash our Carbon economies and yet with the wisdom of history it now apparent that not only have we not yet done anything in these last 35 years but gleefully and extravagantly stoked the fire.

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An update on the young swallows below. All five have successfully left the nest and are safely airborne. Mum and dad took a chance with a second brood but for some reason mum did not sit on the nest very much and eventually I found a broken egg on the floor but nothing in the nest. Very strange as a mouse would have to walk upside down for several feet before reaching the nest. However, the good news was that the same or different combination of partners raised a brood a couple of cottages away and they left the nest in time for the journey south.

My new family of baby swallaw chicks up in the eave of the dog kennel

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If you are visiting the South Hams of Devon and you would like to see some of my original paintings you can find them on display at The Mayne Gallery in Kingsbridge.

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Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming.

In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Stopping the loggers is the fastest and cheapest solution to climate change. So why are global leaders turning a blind eye to this?

So ran the headline in The Independent on 22nd May. It goes on in some detail and shows that Indonesia and Brazil are now the largest emitters of greenhouse gasses after the USA and China even though they are largely non industrial nations. The whole thing is grim reading, but your probaly thinking why am I bringing this up when I should be waxing lyrical about the beauty of the English landscape in May? Well the reason is this.....Damned if I am going to destroy any more of the tropical rainforests just so I can frame lovely views of the British countryside. It really is a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. As I have said before most pictures are framed in tropical and sub tropical wood - a lot of it supplied by dastardly means.

I have researched the various options - no to plastic frames- and decided pine is my best bet. I will keep a close eye on things and see if if can improve its accreditation as standards improve - which they must.

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