Publications
Explore a curated collection of writings, essays, and features that reflect my journey as an Artist. These publications offer insights into my creative process, exhibitions, and the evolving dialogue within contemporary art.
Reflections by David Giles – Gallery Owner, Curator & Artist
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Discover personal insights and artistic reflections from David Giles, offering a unique perspective shaped by his roles as a gallery owner, curator, and creator.
“Spiritscapes”
Essay by David Giles
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This exhibition showcases Pattenden’s commitment to using art to express his deepest self. I love his reference to God saying “Do It again”. I have lost count of the times my grandchild says “Again Grandad” after every little thing. Reading the sign of a café can be source of uproarious laughter that requires 10, 20,30 repetitions, each accompanied by even greater laughter. This is the innocence of the child. The source of Pattenden’s inspiration as he seeks to find the deep meanings in the simplest things.
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For Pattenden, art has been a form of salvation. A way to let go of anger and resentment and embrace the love and beauty of everything and a path that led him eventually to embrace Christ and gave him a positive forward looking optimistic view on life and its meaning.
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Pattenden’s work walks a tightrope between the divine and the earthly. A way of expressing the eternal, the divine, the godly through the concrete. In That sense his works are very honest. They are about paint and the application of paint. Can’t get more honest than that!! They are his personal gateway to God’s endless and eternal forgiveness. An aspect ultimately of childlike innocence and the idea of redemption.
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I love the way Pattenden talks about renewal and the vitality of a God who “delights in the repetition and renewal of creation”, a vitality born not from necessity but from “a profound childlike delight”.
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As a Gallerist, Art Teacher and Art Critic I am delighted by Pattenden’s work. They evoke a lovely childlike sense of freedom, spontaneity and exuberance. They speak of the eternal appetite for infancy as the source of human satisfaction and the path to a better world, to childlike joy and happiness, innocence and redemption. But what I like most about Pattenden’s work, as a fellow artist, is the freedom, looseness, expressiveness and childlike innocence. Like me and any other artists Pattenden seeks to use his painting practice to connect with his inner child with eternal appetite for infancy. He provides a gateway to a deeper realm of reality through his very expressive mark making and expression.
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Like me Pattenden has used painting as a journey of self-healing, as a process of “Post Traumatic Growth”. His work reflects a spiritual journey, A journey of transformation and faith. A journey to express through very expressive mark making with paint the core of his truth, that God is both “endlessly creative and endlessly young in spirit". He creates for us, the viewer, a vision of childlike joy and energy, a vision of vitality, beauty, energy and spirit. He presents to us Spiritscapes, that show us a profound and majestic sense of the eternal appetite for infancy. A vision of the wonder of surrender and the wonder of redemption. A vision of unbridled creative expression, sometimes a vision of the wonder of creative expression at its most abstract.
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I look forward to watching his journey evolve and develop.
Autobiographical Reflections from WA Artist Dale Pattenden
