黑料不打烊

Ross + Kramer is pleased to present 鈥淎ll around the Wrekin鈥欌��, a solo exhibition of new work by London-based artist, David Brian Smith. Smith is known for his luminous landscapes that weave together memory, imagination, and ancestral heritage. Rooted in the English pastoral tradition yet boldly contemporary in vision, Smith鈥檚 paintings explore ideas of place, belonging, and time through radiant color, intricate brushwork, and layered symbolism.

Having grown up in the rural countryside of Shropshire, Smith鈥檚 early connection to agrarian life deeply informs his practice. After relocating to London to study at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, he began using landscape painting as a means to reconnect with his family鈥檚 history and to reimagine his relationship to the land. The exhibition's title, 鈥淎ll around the Wrekin鈥欌��, takes its name from a classic Midlands expression, meaning 鈥渢o take the long way around鈥�.

Smith鈥檚 large-scale canvases鈥攑ainted on heavily woven herringbone linen in a nod to his family鈥檚 heritage鈥攅voke the spirit of Norwich School painters, yet are re-envisioned through a hallucinatory, technicolor lens. The artist鈥檚 compositions are rich with narrative and detail: tiny figures on horseback traverse fields, multicolored animals graze beneath iridescent skies, and miniature farmhouses rest among rolling hills. These scenes hover between reality and reverie, merging personal memory with myth and folklore. Smith鈥檚 use of transparent and opaque layers of oil paint, often combined with gold and silver leaf, give his surfaces an ethereal luminosity, transforming the familiar English countryside into something at once nostalgic and transcendent.