SELF SABOTAGE

Portraits by David Darcy

David Darcy is a multi-disciplinary artist who lives and works in Murrurundi NSW. He has won numerous portrait awards in Australia and was recently commissioned to paint the Honourable Bob Katter for Parliament House.

Having achieved great recognition for traditional portraiture, Darcy once again reinvents his practice with this latest body of work. With his long-awaited solo exhibition, Self Sabotage, exploring the ability to undermine a persona, in search of honest and self-fulfilling representations. From traditional to abstraction, the portraiture becomes alchemy, where faces bloom from landscapes, fracture into myths, borrow masks from memory. Identity is not captured but negotiated, revised with every brushstroke. Self Sabotage hosts a metamorphosis, staging the fragile theatre of who we might be.

Jelle Van Den Berg

Walking into this new exhibition by Murrurundi artist David Darcy one is struck by the diversity in the works. First and foremost, Darcy has been a realist and then again one who focuses on detail in context of his subject which often addresses his surroundings. Being an artist who chooses to live in a small country town brings its challenges which are not immediately clear in the process of representation. Darcy is looking for fusion, for an understanding of what painting is. His interests have shifted dramatically and his vulnerability shows in more ways than one. This search through experimentation is both brave and risky and he should be commended on his attitude and his openness.

What happens in contemporary painting is not often of this ilk but rather a pastiche, a follow-on of stylistic devices. My argument in favour of Darcy's development is that he battles simplicity and strikes a balance with depth and layering both conceptually and technically.