David is in conversation with Sarah Searson about his practice and Eó Mughna’s Lament his film commissioned by The Dock as part of the 2020 Whose Woods These Are Festival of Trees. This work deepens and expands on the themes of his paintings. Davids paintings depict natural forms and spaces on solid, wood panels. They use the chemical qualities of oil washes to disrupt, dissolve or decay the image surface. The light, space and forms are shifting, living and dying, displaying a fragile and temporary nature. The dynamic of his work has emerged from travelling back and forth between Ireland and Hong Kong, where David lived for over 11 years.
As nature is further and further hemmed in, dominated and compromised by population, material culture and environmental degradation, Eó Mughna’s Lament, seeks to create an internal sanctuary, that reflects this pressure as well as a hope for a new sublime.