iNSiDE DAViD WiGHTMAN’S iMAGiNED WORLD: REiVENTiNG THE LANDSCAPE.

David Wightman has a unique approach to creating his iconic landscapes, working not from real world places but from his imagination and understanding of composition, balance and colour. Creating both paintings and print editions, his intricate use of vibrant colours, hand-painted collages, and textured wallpaper elements come together to create landscapes that invite us into other worlds. While his landscapes may appear serene and meditative, they are born of a meticulous, highly personal process that combines nostalgia, experimentation, and a dedication to colour theory.

David works from his studio at home, a change from the huge industrial studio units he has worked in in the past. This change is what first got David interested in printmaking, as he can make his prints larger than his paintings and create more complex compositions. Embracing printmaking as a medium has allowed him greater experimentation with scale, complexity, and colour, while the continued development of his painting practice pushes him to explore and push the boundaries of texture. The shift of studio environment has also meant that David lives amongst his work, something he values greatly. He finds having the works around him creates a calming meditative environment, that in turn aids his creative practice.

David’s artistic practice is rooted in painting and printmaking, with each piece beginning as a graphite line drawing. These initial sketches evolve into full paintings, which in turn serve as the basis for his prints, alongside the original compositions. Sketching first allows David to create a composition freely, and he finds this is the most organic way for his pieces to develop.

When painting, David can be playful, change his mind and adapt as he goes, but, whether sketching or painting, he’s always thinking about how all elements come together to form a harmonious whole. David Wightman’s work focuses on the physicality of space, how forms interact and how gaps can be just as important as the shapes themselves. His work has an architectural quality, he builds imagined worlds from the ground up.

David has not always painted his fantastical landscapes, he previously worked primarily as an abstract artist, but a visit to the 2002 exhibition The American Sublime at the Tate (now Tate Britain) which showcased 19th landscape painting in the United States changed his creative trajectory. These artists, working at a time when uncharted territory was still being explored, took creative liberties with their landscapes - making mountains taller, adding a lake where there was none. David tells us, “These American landscape artists, they were fanciful with how they portrayed landscapes, they were exaggerating.”

Colour is at the heart of David’s practice, and rather than getting ideas from the natural world, he credits colour and the interactions between different hues as being his major source of inspiration. The colours that dominate David Wightman’s landscapes may not exist in these forms in the natural world, but they present a world defined by his personal palette and appetite for experimentation. 

David’s process is technical while also drawing on his intuition. He creates landscapes from planned graphite drawings, often mocking up images on Photoshop to test compositions and tonality and creating his paintings and print editions from there. 

- David Wightman

David Wightman’s work is an invitation to experience the world through the imagination and nostalgia, a means of creative expression, and a refuge - offering visual escapism and quiet contemplation. 

As he is a London based artist, we asked David what his favourite thing to do in the city is. He said that he and his wife, artist Fran Giffard, make time each week to go on a long walk through London, walking for as long as 15 miles. “London walks are underrated” he says “You learn the city in a completely different way when you walk it”.

Sign up to our newsletter to stay tuned for David Wightman updates and his upcoming exhibition here at EDiT.