David Bridgeman’s Clear Horizons
Paintings and drawings by local artist, David
Bridgeman.
By Christopher Tobutt
Friday, October 14, 2005
Clear Horizons is an exhibition of new paintings and
drawings by local artist, David Bridgeman, which opened at the Westin
Casuarina Hotel this week.
Mr Bridgeman arrived in the Cayman Islands in 1987, when
he came into contact with other artists and felt inspired to begin painting.
Since then he has attended workshops by artists such as
Bendel Hydes; Jerry Craig from Jamaica and Isaiah Boodhoo from Trinidad, his
technique being influenced by each one.
Mr Bridgman often works in oils, but his pictures also
incorporate materials such as photocopied newsprint to form collages.
He also uses monoprint techniques, and may develop
several different pictures from one monoprint. Many of these collages, he
says, were made from old architectural drawings.
Earlier this year, Mr Bridgeman joined with fellow artist
Chris Mann, to produce the ‘Anchored In Landscapes’ exhibition at the National
Gallery.
Mr Bridgeman’s new paintings and drawings share the
earlier exhibitions’ theme of perception of landscapes and the feelings they
evoke. These paintings are really a chance to see inside the artist’s mind.
Clear Horizons is, at the same time, about being aware of
these associations so that one is able see things anew:
“A single event in our lives can change our perception of
everything around us. Each one of us sees our surroundings differently. None
of us see a landscape or seascape in the same way. What we see is shaped by
our experiences of the past, the present, and what we predict for the future,”
Mr Bridgeman writes in his “Artist’s Statement.”
Although the landscapes depicted here are essentially
imaginary, many of them have a reference point set in Cayman for example, the
Queens Highway or the harbour.
Mr Bridgeman also explores the tension between what is
natural and what is artificial; deliberately putting the points of a ruler, or
an obvious artifact, such as newsprint, across a natural landscape.
The lack of visual perspective in the paintings adds to
the sense of chronological foreshortening; the many associations and images
are jumbled together as if someone has torn all the pages out of a diary and
thrown them across the floor.
Sometimes the paintings seem truly desolate, like
paintings of the German Expressionist, Otto Dix.
Their elements appear fractured and disjointed;
disaffected. Figures walk around like expressionless ghosts; shadows; people
in a nightmare.
The components in these paintings, whether figures,
trees, or road signs, are like components of watch; they all seem to have a
place, yet somehow, none of them fit together properly. It seems more like a
watch that has been smashed with a big hammer.
Unlike Otto Dix, however, Mr Bridgeman’s paintings often
also contain a sense of warmth, and humanity, like the glimmer of hope when
one wakes from a nightmare.
It is this quality that makes one want to keep looking at
his paintings. The jumble of images disturbs, but paradoxically, like a clear
horizon, it also liberates.
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