About David Hinchliffe
My background
I trained in Fine Art at Manchester College of Art and the Royal College of Art, which I followed with a career teaching art in secondary education. This led me to work more closely with the UK government, receiving an OBE for services to education. I have worked full time as an artist for the last 16 years.
The subject matter for my work is usually based on the local environment but has also included specific commissions over the years. All my work is based on first hand observation, interpretation and memory. I draw to gather information or to explore an idea which can later be used as the basis of a larger work.
My process
For me, painting is a process of discovery, sorting out an idea and exploring it. Much of what I do is related to creating a sense of place, through the manipulation of images, space, shape and colour. In all my paintings I attempt to keep everything provisional, fluid, and needing revision and alteration for as long as I can. This allows my doubts and revisions to become a part of the subject of the picture, and my mental processing to be incorporated. Artist, Michael Andrews, said it best when he described painting as “the most marvellous, elaborate, complete way of making up my mind.”
Generally I prefer to work in oils and acrylic on canvas, but drawings tend to be carried out on paper in a wide range of materials including water colour, charcoal and pastel and gouache. Even when my choices are made and the picture finished, the aim is to make an exact representation of my subject matter, and to show the process of reaching that exact representation in my art.
“Painting is the most marvellous, elaborate, complete
Michael Andrews
way of making up my mind.”