David Hollington

"I am often asked why I paint only Indian or more specifically Hindu subject matter and my answer is usually two fold. Firstly, I have been following the lives of saints, gods, men and animals in the Hindu popular stories and sacred texts and I realised that they could be a pertinent vehicle to express all I wanted to convey about the human condition. All life is here in immense detail and also raw and profoundly emotional. I believe I am seeking the unattainable and that creates a tension in the visual framework of each painting, a synthesis of romantic storytelling and ecstatic devotional.

"Secondly, life is a slow continuation of overlapping realisations. I grew up in this cold Protestant northern European country, I felt starved of colour, drama, excitement. As a child I would watch the epic Mahabharata on television on Sunday mornings. I started drawing gods and animals. When I came to art school in London in the 1980s I fell in love with the Victoria and Albert Museum, the now sadly gone Museum of Mankind and the Chola bronzes at the British Museum. When I eventually travelled around India ten years ago I felt myself or my soul becoming a huge sponge absorbing the essence of what I would later attempt to suffuse into everything I create.

"Some questions are easy to answer and some need to be regularly revised and re-evaluated. This is one of those questions. I hope I never really understand it or why I feel I need to work in the way I do, or perhaps then I would lose the magic."

David studied at Harrow School of Art and at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London.