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Grace Ebert More
“Bathers At K’gari” (2024), oil on canvas, 100 x 120 centimeters. All images courtesy of David Surman and Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, shared with permission
David Surman’s Gestural Paintings Question How We Understand Animal Emotion
March 7, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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Now based in London, David Surman was raised in a small coastal village in southwest England. The bucolic scenery and access to animals left an indelible impact on the artist, who plumbs his memory and draws on a vast array of art historical references in his paintings.
Surman’s most recent body of work is on view in his solo exhibition at Rebecca Hassock Art Gallery. In comparison to previous collections, After the Flood is less abstract but similarly gestural, as sweeping brushstrokes delineate a bull’s sinewed musculature or the curled mane of a bashful horse.
“Clarion Call” (2024), oil on canvas, 120 x 100 centimeters
Interested in the ways we project our experiences and ideologies onto the natural world, Surman renders recognizable subjects in a manner that reflects our tendency to ascribe human emotion and feeling to other species. “I like painting animals because they short-circuit people’s interpretive routines and get them looking at paint without the self-consciousness they might bring to abstract painting,” he said in a 2023 interview, adding:
The creatures that I paint are caught up in our human problem, which is the separation from the world caused by consciousness. The way in which my animals look at the viewer deliberately sets up a feeling of intensity, perhaps troubled engagement, a kind of accusation or affection. But in every case, the creature possesses a trace or residue of conscious agency.
In “Old Stew Head,” for example, viewers encounter a deeply troubled fox grasping a limp fish in its jaws. The dog in “Bathers At K’gari” is similarly anxious as it carries a young pup under a bright blue sky.
After the Flood continues in London through March 29. Find more from the artist on his website and Instagram.
“Old Stew Head” (2025), oil on canvas, 60 x 50 centimeters
“Icarus And Daedalus” (2024), oil on canvas, 120 x 100 centimeters
“Kelpie Of Loch Ailort” (2024), oil on canvas, 60 x 50 centimeters
“The Explorers” (2025), oil on canvas, 100 x 120 centimeters
“Leo The Lion (Art For Art’s Sake)” (2025), oil on canvas, 120 x 100 centimeters
“Ostracon” (2025), oil on canvas, 160 x 140 centimeters
“A Frog In An Endless Pond” (2024), oil on canvas, 60 x 50 centimeters
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Art
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#surrealDecember 29, 2021Grace EbertAll images © Rafael Silveira, shared with permissionIn Rafael Silveira’s Unportraits, magenta curls and slick, turquoise coifs frame the bizarre scenarios unfolding in a subject’s mind. The Brazilian artist, who gravitates towards oil paints in shades of pink and blue, translates a character’s psyche through wilting flowers, gashes in the earth’s surface, and parrots with feathers that drip like wet paint. Anatomical elements like singular eyes, hearts sprouting veins, and twisting brain matter bolster the unearthly qualities of each work, which meld flora and fauna into a surreal mishmash. “From inside, we are a strange mix of dreams, thoughts, feelings, and human meat,” Silveira tells Colossal. “I think these portraits are not persons but moods.”Peculiar situations surround the subjects as their sweaters melt like ice cream and spiders spin webs from the parched ground supplanting their necks, a visual that evokes thick wrinkles associated with aging. These fleeting actions are part of the artist’s reference to paper ephemera and the ways thoughts and feelings decompose over time. “This rich mental energy is like an invisible raw element, part of the immaterial alchemy of my works,” he says. “We can’t control what life brings us, but we can decide how to react. We make these small decisions all the time. These characters evoke the power of reaction.”Silveira is based in Curitiba, Brazil, and has his work slated for a January group exhibition at London’s Dorothy Circus Gallery and in March in an immersive solo show at Farol Santander in São Paulo. Until then, pick up a print and keep an eye on his Instagram for new additions to his portrait series, which will be on view in July at Choque Cultural Gallery.
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#oil painting
#painting
#plants
#portraits
#surrealDo stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more. Join now! Share this story More
