Artist David Grosvenor swaps his usual watercolours

LIVING on the slopes of the Moelwyns not far from Porthmadog, David Grosvenor is not short of breathtaking scenery.

What’s surprising is that until recently he rarely painted the mountains, preferring instead to produce summery watercolour paintings of flowers.

His latest exhibition, at Cardiff’s Albany Gallery this month, reflects a bold change of direction: there are some flower paintings but the majority of the work depicts the mountains of North Wales, executed in oils.

Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that he has managed to retain many of the fans who originally fell in love with his brighter, floral artwork.

Since changing his style he has had a number of sell-out shows in North Wales, and many of his buyers have collected his work for many years.

“I was very fortunate to take them with me,” he says. “A lot of people have told me, ‘I normally only like watercolours but I like your oils’.

“I wonder if it’s because I bring something of how I paint in watercolour into the oil paintings.”

The son of a missionary, David spent part of his childhood in Madagascar and studied English Literature and Art at Exeter University, where oil was his chosen medium.

His first career was as an illustrator and graphic designer in London but in 1991 he moved to Wales in order to focus on his painting.

His use of watercolour sprang from his background in illustration, and in Wales he found that it suited the summer months, when flowers were blooming in the garden and the light was bright.

Oils gradually emerged as a way to paint through the darker winter months.

“In the winter the light doesn’t suit watercolours,” he says.

“With watercolour you can get really lovely light bright colours because the paint is transparent and the paper shines through; it suits the sunny summer days. Oil isn’t like that; it’s dense, it’s opaque and when you start to mix the colours you’re much more likely to get more sombre colours. I think it suits moodier subjects.”

Nothing could be moodier than a mountain but David admits that he initially found them “a bit frightening” as a subject.

It was only as time went by and he started to walk their paths that he began getting to grips with them on canvas.

“I’m painting far more of the mountains now than I’ve ever tackled in the past – the textural quality of oil suits their ruggedness,” he says.

“I’ve started to walk more and when I get up there I find it completely energising. I wish I could take big canvases with me to work on.

“There’s a feeling about being up in the mountains looking over the edge of a crag that’s almost spooky, so the initial fear I had was probably not just about painting them but also going to some of those places as well.”

A string of wet, gloomy summers strengthened his resolve to paint mountain scenes, which are typically completed in the studio shortly after a mountain walk, while the colours and feelings are still fresh in his mind. Familiarity with his subject is vital.

“It’s rather like portrait painting,” he says.

“If you don’t know somebody and you’re asked to paint a portrait from a photograph, that painting cannot possibly depict that person because you’ve got no idea of their personality.

“It’s the same with mountains and flowers. I love gardening and growing the flowers that I paint. I think that kind of intimacy with your subject is important and that’s probably why I didn’t paint the mountains when I first moved here; I wasn’t intimate enough with them.”

His change of subject matter has gone hand in hand with a switch from brushes to palette knife.

“To start with I didn’t get on with them but I kept persisting and then stumbled across one particular shape of knife which is bliss to paint with, it just suits the way that I work.

“It’s shaped like a chisel and it completely changed my way of working.

“I think the biggest step forward I made in oil painting coincided with the finding of that knife. It has tiny corners so you can work in relatively small detail, but you’ve also got about two inches of blade itself so you can be quite expansive with it, painting not just with the wrist but with the whole arm.

“It’s made a huge difference to the way that I work and the satisfaction that I get from doing it.”

Satisfaction also comes from exhibiting his work at the Albany Gallery.

“Filling up cupboards and rooms with paintings would be quite a fruitless exercise but being able to get lovely feedback from people who’ve bought the paintings is really rewarding.

“I’m very fortunate that I do something I enjoy and can give pleasure to other people through that – I can’t tell you how lucky I feel.”