“There are places, times, moments in a day that can be extraordinary and it is these that I seek to express through the process of painting.”

Inspired by Bonnard’s notion of capturing the initial sensation on first seeing something; “What I am after is the first impression - I want to show all one sees on first entering the room - what my eye takes in at first glance.” So for David Atkins it is the visual excitement in the brief intervals of time when light, space, colour and movement come together in harmony.

Initially it is through the act of drawing that Atkins engages with the view. Constantly aware of time - that things will rapidly alter; light will vary, weather will change, people will move through and traffic will race by. In small sketchbook studies he quickly interprets all he can through scribbled line and mark. “I seek to express something of both the subject and my experience. By spontaneously drawing or painting in a city or landscape I feel as though I am part of a drama, desperately attempting to say something about that moment and my involvement in it.”

Although aware that the camera can capture more detail, but does not select, Atkins revels in what the tactile, physical qualities of paint can achieve, working intuitively, building up and changing a painting as he responds to what is happening. As it progresses so the marks and use of paint become more vigorous and economical. What results is the culmination of a struggle to describe what is essential and elemental.

This new body of work is a result of recent visits to New York and Tuscany and more locally the Gloucestershire landscape and his home territory, Dorset. Although Atkins is offered suggestions as to where and what might be a good place to paint, more often, he says, it is the place that finds him. In New York he made hundreds of sketchbook drawings that, through their spontaneity, make sense of the noise, energy and excitement of Manhattan. In response to the intense light and the patterned texture of the Tuscan landscape he made large gestural watercolours. Moved by the very Englishness of the views around Chipping Campden; shafts of light glinting on far away fields and hills and rain showers passing quickly in the summer breeze, Atkins produced a series of gloriously fresh small oil paintings.

Essentially what David Atkins constantly seeks to distil in his painting is that spirit of place not solely a depiction of it.

Henry Beesley, September 2009