David De Silva works in oils, acrylic, mixed media and whatever is to hand. Much of it is very labour intensive and he thinks that sometimes better work can come out of a conscious decision to just work with stuff that's immediately around you. De Silva believes in limiting and improvising his artistic process and materials resulting in happenstance and surprises in the final work.
1) Which art movement do you consider most influential in your practice?
I suppose an observer would say Dada or Surrealism, together with aspects of Pop Art, but they’re more influences that have been pointed out to me than something I’m very aware of or think about much.
2) Where do you go and when to make your best art?
If I knew that I’d spend all day there. In truth, although I have a designated “studio”, there are few areas of my home that are not used for making art in some way. I’m lucky to have the flexibility of a living space which changes according to what I’m working on.
3) How do you describe your 'creative process'?
There is a creative process but I’d be hard-pressed to describe it or how it begins. Sometimes ideas can come from some aspect of your last piece of work. Or they can come out of nowhere or from something said.
From then on its matter of working at it, of thrashing things around and trying ways of seeing and doing and making something new, trying not to get too disheartened when it’s not happening.
It’s hard work, the see-sawing between highs and lows. The lows, the moments of self-doubt or failure in some way, rear up in every single job. It’s always been that way. It never gets any easier. You just have to work through them, knowing that you’ve done it before and you can do it again. But the highs are the biggest buzz I know.
4) Which artist, living or deceased, is the greatest inspiration to you?
Too many to list, really… Wayne Thiebaud, George Condo, Paula Rego, Ed Ruscha. There are loads. All, like me, of a certain generation. I don’t know if you’d call it inspiration. You just look at their work and it moves you and you love them and you just want to be as good as them. Maybe it’s aspiration, more than inspiration.
Seeing images of older artists, people you’ve followed and loved all your life, shuffling around their over-flowing studios, still creative, still passionate, is quite life-affirming. It’s their lifeblood. I’m intolerant of people who play at art or dabble or treat it like a lifestyle.
5) If you weren't an artist, what would you do?
I have no idea. I hope it’s something I never have to consider.
6) What do you listen to for inspiration?
“Inspiration” is very over-rated. It’s something people who don’t make art think wafts like an aura around people who do. I’m not even sure there is such a thing. I think it’s more a question of having an idea - or discovering something - then developing it to make something that excites you and, more importantly, trying to make it different in some way to the thing you last did. Recognising, too, the value of accidents is something that’s often undervalued.
I would hate for someone to say my name and the response to be “Oh yes, he paints so-and-sos, doesn’t he?”. I think it’s about experiment and change, not just blindly sticking to what you know works and sells. I don’t see any creativity in simply repeating yourself.
As for listening, if I’ve reached a point in a piece of work where things are bubbling and I’m happy with it and the way it’s going, I’ll stream some music or put the radio on playback. Don Letts and Jarvis Cocker are a constant – and Gilles Peterson, so long as he’s not banging on about football. Otherwise, I’m searching out and downloading all those former vinyl I foolishly gave away and which were so much a part of my life.
7) If you could own one artwork, and money was no object, which piece would you acquire?
Dod Proctor’s “Morning”…. Edward Hopper “New York Office” or “Approaching a City”… Meredith Frampton “Marguerite Kelsey”… Mondrian “Broadway Boogie-Woogie”… sorry, you said one, didn’t you... anything by Robert Cottingham…. a few of Wayne Thiebaud’s sticky cakes… Paula Rego’s Dog Women and her abortion triptych – how many artists can claim the marks they put down on paper actually effected a change in the law?
8) What is your key piece of advice for artists embarking on a fine art or creative degree today?
Make sure you want to do it; it’s not really a try it and see option.
9) What is your favourite book of all time (fiction or non-fiction)?
I don’t have one in particular, but AA Gill would probably be up there, god rest his soul.
10) If you could hang or place your artwork in one non-traditional art setting, where would that be?
Some years back, I contacted the owners of Stiletto, a newly established licensed brothel in Australia. I was wondering if they’d be interested in hanging some oil paintings I’d made based on Readers’ Wives photos in adult magazines. I thought they might suit the venue and certainly be a more imaginative alternative to the naked women draped over Harleys that I imagined – probably quite wrongly – they had planned.
The reply said no thanks, they had already allocated the art to their walls. She didn’t say what.
I still think that was a missed opportunity.
I have, over time, made a number of dog paintings as commissions, some of them not bad. Maybe I should contact Battersea Dogs’ Home…
11) What was the biggest lesson your university course or time studying taught you?
That you get out of it what you put in.
That good teachers can become friends (and, conversely, that as a teacher, students can become lifelong friends).
That you should exploit the facilities to the full. The equipment’s all there. Just for you. Use it. You’ll never get a chance like this again.
That just because you’re on a Graphics course doesn’t mean you can’t make a Fine Art print if you want to. Who’s telling you it has to be a poster? Forays into other departments, other disciplines, and learning from them should be encouraged, not frowned on. It’s all art.
It’s been said that in some of the newer London art schools - these great flagship buildings that attract architecture fans from all over the world - there’s so little intermingling that students rarely meet the people on the floors above and below them. There’s something wrong with that.
A newly opened art college in Sussex forbade students, for health and safety reasons, from sticking anything – anything - on the pristine white walls. It was somehow deemed inappropriate, despite it being an art school. Of course, everyone meekly did as they were told. Whatever happened to student protest?
12) And finally, if we were to fast forward 10 years, where would we find you?
I have no idea; hopefully still doing what I do and love... maybe so successfully that I’d have someone full time just to clean my brushes.
