David Baker FRSASA AiPP. David is an Adelaide-based photographer and artist who works with watercolours and acrylics. His practice is experimental and innovative – manipulating mediums in unique ways to create artwork that tells a story.
David seeks out lines, shadow, reflection, repetition and disturbance or disruption in his photography. First capturing the context then cropping for a minimalist representation. In post he crops more for composition and sometimes amplifies colours to take the design to another place – creating more energy than was originally present and so a new story emerges.
Using light and shadow and close cropping, he exposes the energy of the subject– urban chaos, carefree beach; lazy sight-seers; mystical nature, furious water, fragile nature while leaving something to be worked out by the viewer.
When painting, David uses a variety of materials, from house-paint rollers and brushes, to bricking and tiling trowels. He is influenced by a strong urban and industrial aesthetic and creates his work while listening to music, adapting colour and shape to the sound. In his dynamic and experimental practice, he reveals a tension between the representation of the organic and inorganic.
“For me, the work must have energy and contradiction – a disruption in colour or shape or repetition. There is the norm, the average, the setting and there is a schism, a thrust, a danger, a radical which gives life and energy and a twist.”
For David, the creation is the beginning. Telling the stories and listening to how others see the work is an engagement that completes the experience.
