David Rhodes
'untitled 8'

Acrylic on canvas
152 x 125 cm

David Rhodes was born in Manchester in 1955. He studied at Brighton Polytechnic 1975-76 and Bristol Polytechnic 1976-79. His first one-person exhibition was at Showroom Gallery London 1985 and others were at Fuse Gallery London 1988, Anthony Wilkinson Fine Art London 1994 and Habitat London 1997. Recent group exhibitions include 'Breatheprojektet' Göteborg Sweden 1999, 'Sight Mapping' Bohuslans Museum Uddevalla Sweden 2002 and the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2002. His work is included in the 2002 Liverpool Biennial.

"Each of my paintings is made one line at a time, each line differently coloured, until they proliferate into networks. The painting continues until it has a separate identity: this could be seen as reflecting a separate personality or a particular social configuration or process of memory. The loops and lines are discursive and of varying velocity, producing an intricate and mutable space. The paintings can take weeks or months to resolve into a balanced state: an intuitive process whose complexity hopefully demands time spent in looking.

Colour is there both as a pleasurable substance in itself and as a structuring element, like an indication of routes to take; but with one role not compromising the other. That connection between something seen and something touched, the way that this unfolds in our experience, interests me a lot. I often find a duality in the paintings: urgency and play, structure and fluidity, humour and seriousness, melancholy and rapture."