David Stone

The work on view runs from scenes of a concrete bridge to scrubby vegetation with various other images in between. There was a period in which my attention slid from the romance of the road to the unnoticed undergrowth that abounds around us and then to the concrete pillboxes. The separator of the subjects was the Covid lockdown.

Watching Australia burn focused my attention on nature, especially those areas we take for granted, evidently at our peril. The undergrowth is undervalued but is as much part of the natural world as majestic trees. And with peril in mind came a series of pill-box drawings, one having fallen intact onto a beach so that it lies under the sea at each high tide. It is black with seaweed.

Perhaps Covid had fostered in me a desire to stay away from people and it was this that caused me to search among a thin strip of woodland bordering an industrial area to find a third landscape, a place where bushes and human detritus meet, sometimes in a happy confluence. Humanity makes productive landscape by cutting down trees and tilling soil. Human remains, organic and inorganic inhabit the places we have lived in. Once we would have left a stone axe as a gift to a god. Now we leave behind plastic because it’s difficult to control on a windy day.

I caught sight of a tattered blue plastic sheet tangled up on trees and rent by the wind. It was beautiful, set as it was among February vegetation. Was it a piece of blue sky that had fallen through the grey cloud to lodge among trees? Was it a sheet of plastic that wanted to escape a life wrapping pallets to be among the living architecture of trees? Being aware of the polluting nature of plastic I found that trees and undergrowth are good at trapping the substance before it enters water courses and that with luck the acidic woodland soil will degrade the resulting nano plastic particles over a period of time.

However, blue plastic beggars a question. Nature is beautiful is it not. And if it is the epitome of beauty how can any work of man referring to nature be as beautiful. However, nature can also be massively destructive so I think we should call it quits and admit that nature is a source of beauty, but not the only source. Pity the poor blue plastic sheet that simply wanted more to life than monotony. It too can be judged beautiful.

Following Covid I liked to think that I had discovered a landscape with attitude, not conforming to the standard view, but landscape, nonetheless. Our view of landscape is generally that of a vista, an open view spread before us. If worked upon by human labour such a view could be seen as an historical record involving generations of people working on the face of the earth. However, I wanted to look beyond that to the unnoticed areas that might have involved involuntary human intervention. Blue plastic had a particular draw because blue on the ground inverts the natural order of things, and it is surprisingly easy to find. But that led into the concept of the aerial view, not looking across but down. Some of the vertical views to be seen here are from an altitude of one metre but others are from much higher up. Roads, trees and hedges seen from hundreds of metres high echo the shapes that can found in ground level bushes. And at this level it all joins up, natural patterns being repeated endlessly.

The Norfolk etchings echo this point. They are landscape in abstract but abound with the shapes that occur in the undergrowth. The etching series pays attention to nature, and extends drawing, the medium being particularly useful in etching.

I will remark here on a book I am writing as part of a post graduate course. At one point it features a stricken British bomber in 1944 making an emergency landing at an airfield not far from my home. It flew across Suffolk and North East Essex on fire and crashed catastrophically 30 seconds away from landing. Several etchings are taken from aerial photographs made in 1945 of the area over which it would have flown. They have a certain poignancy for me.

There are portraits among the plastic detritus, concrete and undergrowth. They are local people who inhabit the land I’ve painted. They will all have driven across the Orwell Bridge at some point, will have looked at the landscape and will have noticed scraps of plastic lodged in it, and will have had some feeling for its history.

David Stone CV

Education

1962 to 1969 Strand Grammar, London

1969 to 1970 Brighton College of Art, Foundation Art

1970 to 1973Brighton College of Art, Dip A D Fine Art, Painting with Printing

Employment History

1973 to 1974Short term employment in the Art Department of the Imperial War Museum for three months to catalogue drawings from World War 1.

1974 to1991working for the GLC in vehicle taxation, followed by the ILEA in school keepers assistants payroll followed by work in Student Grants from 1979 to 1991.

1991 to 2011working for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Student Grants Section. In this capacity I had a middle management post and was seconded part time to the Department for Education and Science to work on the implementation plans for the roll out of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) scheme. In this capacity I was the author of a document detailing the steps required to implement the EMA scheme. This was intended for English Education Authorities however the DfES contracted the scheme out to a private contractor. Nevertheless, the document was successfully used by Scottish Education Authorities to implement what was regarded as a challenging grant scheme.

2011-2016I was self employed working on a part time basis for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets minuting school governor meetings and meetings held in schools on special measures.

Solo Show

2006‘Suburbia at Night’ @ Les Livre Gallery, Colchester, Essex.

2015‘A Sense of Place’ @ Halesworth Gallery, Halesworth, Suffolk.

2017‘The A12 at Night’ @ ART:Oasis, Frinton, Essex.

2019Diamonds in my Windshield @ Chappel Galleries, Essex.

Group Exhibitions

2007‘The Essex Open Exhibition’ @ the Beecroft Gallery, Essex

2008‘The Essex Open Exhibition’ @ the Beecroft Gallery, Essex

2008‘The Discerning Eye’ @ the Mall Galleries, London

2013‘Eight Walks’ @ Dedham, Essex

2013Cuckoo Farm Print Workshop @ the Benham Gallery, Essex

2013Print Workshop Annual Show @ Colchester Les Livres Gallery, Essex

2014Mini Print International @ Seacourt Print Workshop, Bangor, NI

2014‘Earth, Air, Fire and Water’ @ the Edmund Gallery, Bury St Edmunds

2014‘Eastern Open’ @ Kings Lynn, Norfolk

2015Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize show @ the Mall Gallery, London

2015‘After Dark’ @ Cuckoo Farm Studios, Colchester, Essex

2015‘12 Print Makers’, @ Swan House Gallery, Harwich, Essex

2016‘Out of the Nest’ @ Quay Gallery, Snape, Suffolk

2016‘Sentinel Select’, @ Sentinel Gallery, Wivenhoe, Essex

2016‘12 Print Makers’, @ Digby Gallery, Colchester, Essex

2016’12 Print Makers @ Edmund Gallery, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

2016‘In a natural place @ Edmund Gallery, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

2016‘Landscape Impressed -12 Print Makers@ Flatford NT, Suffolk

2016‘Conversations’ @ the Minories, Colchester, Essex

201712 Printmakers, @ 54 The Gallery, Shepherd Market, London

2017‘Out of the Nest 2017’ @ Quay Gallery, Snape, Suffolk

2017‘12PM at Hertford Theatre’ @Hertford, Hertfordshire

2017‘CAS artists’ Sea Picture Gallery, Clare, Suffolk

2017‘Water Everywhere’ @ Quay Gallery, Snape, Suffolk

2017‘12PM All Fired Up’ @ The Old Fire Engine House, Ely, Cambridgeshire

2018‘Inheritance’ East Anglia Art Fund @ Norwich Castle, Norfolk

2018‘Celebration Summer Exhibition’ @ Chappel Galleries, Essex

2019Summer exhibition @ Chappel Galleries, Essex

201912PM at Sentinel @ Sentinel Gallery, Essex

2019Westmorland Landscape Prize Show @ Rheged Gallery, Penrith

202012PM Printscape @ Garage Gallery, Aldeburgh, Suffolk

2020August Mixed Exhibition @ Chappel Galleries, Essex

2020New English Art Club annual exhibition @ Mall Galleries, London

202112PM at Aldeburgh @ Aldeburgh Gallery, Aldeburgh, Suffolk

2021Wells Art Contemporary @ Wells Cathedral, Somerset

2021Group Exhibition @ Chappel Galleries, Essex

202230x30 group show @ Benham Gallery, Cuckoo Farm Studios, Essex

2022Urban Places group show @ Benham Gallery, Cuckoo Farm Studios

2022Summer Group exhibition @ Chappel Galleries, Essex

202312PM @ Ely, Cambridgeshire

2023Cornard Portrait Group @ the Benham Gallery, Cuckoo Farm Studios

2023Woolwich Print Fair on-line @ Woolwich, London

202412PM @ Mill Tye Gallery, Suffolk

2024Collage @ the Benham Gallery, Cuckoo Farm Studios, Essex

2024Frottage @ the Benham Gallery, Cuckoo Farm Studios, Essex

202512PM @ the Pond Gallery, Snape Maltings, Suffolk

2025Cornard Portrait Group Snape Maltings, Suffolk 2025

Group Membership

201412 PM (Twelve Print Makers)