SOMA NewArt GALLERY

David Flett      Artist Statement

My interest in drawing and painting people started in my childhood when I first began looking at everything. It all just seemed natural to be interested in anything alive from the fat flabby parts of my dogs face, a boxer and staring at those long, elegant hands of my father while he reads the newspaper to examining my grandfather's deeply wrinkled face with that long winding nose and his ever elongated ears until he called me to his bed to say goodbye at 96 years old.

When I was in art school I read that the masters' from the renaissance period could draw the human figure anatomically correct in any position out of their head without any visual reference and right there in the library I told myself "OK, that's want I'm going to be able to do."  Well, it happened, after three separate studies of human anatomy, from head to toe and two years of full time life drawing I could sit down to a blank piece of paper and begin the construction lines of the figure in any position then gradually draw every visual bone and muscle shape in correct proportion. This later served me well from animating human form for film to drawing from memory to crank out hundreds of storyboards for film and TV commercials. 

Then there is 'painting' people that can be done to depict every detail or leaving a shorthand version and allowing the viewer to fill in the parts left out.... or something in between where the focal points are detailed the rest is briefly and quickly narrated with flowing, rhythmic brush strokes.

David has been working full time in almost every category of commercial art, involving illustration, murals, film animation and finally, fine art painting with oils.

After 2 years of film animation at a community college he started as an animator with Sesame Street shorts, TV commercials and the Flintstones, then 3 years on a feature film that had a large budget, but lost it's direction and flopped at the box office. 

Turning 25 years old, David returned to school for 2 years to study classical fine art. Drawing and (painting) every day, including two intensive study periods of human anatomy.

He later drifted into commercial art, developing various illustration techniques and cranking out storyboards for television commercials and film scripts. These are a perfect compliment to his animation background and it was a fun and fulfilling mental, visual exercise. David also got into painting murals on canvas and exteriors, using airbrush and spray guns.

Having had experience (and teaching classes at two local art schools) with watercolors, acrylic paint and airbrush David had dabbled, but never become thoroughly intimate with the various technical procedures of oil painting and he was beginning to put paintings into art galleries in Toronto.

In 1995 David took a concentrated study of a condensed version of a 3 year, classical painting course from John Micheal Angel, who learned his craft and classical training from Pietro Annigoni, master painter from Italy, having been chosen to paint the young Queen Elizabeth in 1953. Angel directs and runs Angel Academy of Art in Florence, Italy, promoting the lost lessens of the old painting masters of Europe.

David now paints mostly "plien air" painting, studio finished works and portraits.

David was born and raised in Toronto, Canada and currently lives in Brigantine, NJ.