David Browne

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land marked 2024

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David’s current work is deeply connected to the part of the year he spends living and working in an olive grove, close to the hill town of Palombara Sabina that is situated north east of Rome, Lazio. The inspiration for his drawings, sculptures, prints and paintings is derived largely from the Sabine landscape: ancient olive trees, etruscan, roman and medieval remains, tombs, and artefacts that can be found throughout the hill towns and surrounding countryside. 

 

The olive tree is the starting point, providing both inspiration and materials for the work. In early spring they set about tree pruning. Decisions are then taken about which pieces of wood may be suitable for sculptures - the rest being cut and stacked as fire wood for cooking as well as heating the house. 

 

The repeated geometric motifs in the work draw on etruscan frescoes, roman and early medieval mosaics, and these are explored in both the sculptures and the olive leaf paper works. Pieces of olive wood are cut to create a series of columns, facades and forms that exploit the natural shapes and twists in the wood. These sculptural forms then go through a series of iterations with imposed repeated geometric motifs made using a chain saw or chisel cut. The aim of these interventions is to create both a visual tension and dynamic with the organic form and natural growth patterns. Though all the sculpture is completed outside, most pieces are destined for a domestic setting, so it is always interesting to see how the piece is transformed again when placed on a window sill, table top or shelf. Further interventions take the form of carbonising the wood through burning and in some cases applying natural oxides to highlight a cut or repeating geometric motif. More recently David has been applying wine vinegar to the wood in order to bring out the natural tannins.

 

Production of the hand made olive leaf paper involves stripping the leaves from the pruned branches, followed by boiling and chopping them up to form a pulp. Using a deckle the wet pulp is either cast on to the side of the house or on to rusted metal sheets.  The metal sheets have been prepared so that the painted marks echo elements of the ancient walls, mosaics and well trodden stone and terracotta paths encountered in the surrounding hill towns and archeological remains found at Ostia Antica and Villa Adriana. The cast sheets are left outside in the mediterranean sun and once fully dry the paper is then carefully removed to reveal the artwork. Each piece is completely unique as it is not possible to fully control how the wet rusty surface will react with the pulp. 

 

Both the sculpture and olive leaf works reflect David’s recurring obsession with repetition and exploration of the tension between the organic and geometric. Other underlying themes include the fragility of the eco system with the increasing urbanisation of the landscape in this part of Lazio, as well as exploring, through abstraction, the rich layers of history that can be found in the surrounding buildings and landscape from the etruscan, roman and renaissance to the more modernist interventions of the twentieth century.