David Webb Galata (Blue) 2019 Acrylic on canvas 46 x 41 cm
Galata (Blue,) 2019. Acrylic on canvas, 46 x 41 cm

…I would posit that the external, social world often informs and seeps into works alongside the personal. For example, David Webb’s ‘Galata (Blue)’ is, on one level, a quiet and meditative affair depicting one flat white form on top another but is undoubtedly informed by his keen eye and relationship to places (including Galata – a village in Cyprus) as titles of so many of his other paintings often reveal. The human sense of balance, poise, lightness and weight, plus symmetrical and asymmetrical interrelationships between forms (geometric and organic), crucially relies on visual perception in his overall project. ‘Galata (Blue)’ possesses a 2D design aesthetic that nevertheless hints at the mass and three dimensionality of architecture. I was also fascinated by an easily missed small smudge of the blue acrylic paint that had thinly leaked from close to the apex of the triangular white base on to the rectangular shape above, as if to remind the observer that this is painting and not graphics. It also reminded me that all perception and thought is as sophisticated in simplicity of realisation as in sometimes necessary complexity.

Read the review at fineartruminations.com