Event
David Bromley: A Few Days A LifetimePost an Event »
Caldwell Snyder Gallery
September 15 - October 20, 2014Info
341 Sutter Street San Francisco, CA 94108 Google Map »
Caldwell Snyder Gallery in San Francisco is pleased to announce our second exhibition for Australian artist David Bromley. Bromley was born in Sheffield, England, in 1960, and his family moved to Australia when he was four. A self-taught artist, Bromley gained recognition in Austrlia in his early 20’s. He carved out a career as one of the most popular and prolific artists in Australia and has gained international recognition exhibiting in Asia, Europe, and the US. Bromley has demonstrated a great range in his artistic talents from painting, sculpture, printmaking, and film. This exhibition will feature a selection of recent paintings highlighting his three distinct styles: the female nude, butterfly abstractions, and narrative paintings of children. Each series is painted in Bromley’s signature graphic style of bold colors with illustrative black outlines.
Bromley’s provocative nudes draw from pop art influences including Andy Wahol. His use of gold and silver leaf backdrops with stark black outlines nod to Warhol’s portrait prints. Like the late artist, Bromley repeats this series in an obsessive fashion, painting certain portraits in variations of colors and hues. Many famous models in Australia have sat for the artist and lend to his interest in referencing mass media.
By contrast, Bromley’s narrative works of children are adaptations of 1950’s book illustration. These works capture the innocence and joy of childhood in an endless world of fantasy and play. During Bromley’s youth, he discovered a collection of children’s comic books outside of his family home.
He has fond memories of viewing the illustrated pages intently and these distinct memories shaped his work. The paintings appear as pages of a larger narrative, snaptshots from a whimsical world of exploration.
Linking the two narratives are Bromley’s series of butterflies and flowers. References to fertility, transformation, and time are abundant in this work. Each painting depicts repetitive images of butterflies intertwined with nature and flowers. The objects are painted on beautiful backdrops of lush, abstract paintings. They are a wonderful gesture toward the circle of life and beauty that surrounds us.