David Abbott
A Certain Day
That Art Gallery
June 10 - July 2, 2022
The valley sighs like an exhaling lung. Vapours rise and muddle with the humdrum sky. Sounds ascend from the loamsome belly of the earth, deep at first but soon decorated with bell-like melodies that form into words. The valley has learned to sing. The first words are clay, rain, thorn, rock. Then vetch, field maple, beetle, owl, hare, worm, and finally barn, path, gravestone. Some of this song I copy down into my notebook the rest soaks unevenly into the rough hessian of my memory. The song today is strange but brings to mind others. It has borrowed couplets, stolen some motifs, comes attired in a hand-me-down melody. Pedalling my bicycle I whistle it home. I whistle it in the kitchen over coffee, while digging in the garden, walking with the dog, cleaning my brushes. It joins the river of song whose words are people, history, death, climate, ritual, life, each of the seasons. It is the river that pulled me to this place and that carries me on to the next. The valley breathes and sings whether I am there or not.
A Certain Day was an exhibition of paintings by Bristol based artist David Abbott that explores ways of remembering through the medium of landscape.
Exhibited work
Please contact me for information about purchasing any of the unsold paintings.

A Certain Day
Oil on linen
16 x 12in
2022
Sold

Each and Every Year
Acrylic on plywood
25.4 x 16.9cm (painting)
2022
Sold

All the Week
Acrylic on plywood
25.4 x 16.9cm (painting)
2022

How Could She Vanish
Acrylic on plywood
40 x 23.5cm (painting)
2022
Sold

Inflection
Acrylic on plywood
25.4 x 16.9cm (painting)
2022
Sold

No East or West
Acrylic on plywood
20 x 11.7cm (painting)
2022
Sold

This Very Day
Acrylic on plywood
28 x 20cm (painting)
2022

The Time it Takes
Acrylic on plywood
25.4 x 16.9cm (painting)
2022
Sold

Come Quickly
Acrylic on plywood
30 x 22.5cm (painting)
2022

A-glimmering
Acrylic on plywood
25.4 x 16.9cm (painting)
2022
Sold

A Stranger I Came
Acrylic on plywood
25.4 x 20.3cm (painting)
2022
Sold

When the Wind Begins to Sing
Acrylic on plywood
28 x 20cm (painting)
2022
Sold

The Dead-man's Thumb, the Harebell Blue
Acrylic on plywood
40 x 23.5cm (painting)
2022
Sold

Time Enough
Acrylic on plywood
28 x 20cm (painting)
2022
Sold

When Any Winde
Acrylic on plywood
28 x 20cm (painting)
2022
Sold

Out of the Ground Come Words
Acrylic on plywood
50 x 29.4cm (painting)
2022
Sold

Close Harmony
Acrylic on plywood
30 x 22.5cm (painting)
2022

Weather-beaten
Acrylic on plywood
25.4 x 16.9cm (painting)
2022
Sold

Old and Crazy Earth
Oil on linen
16 x 12in
2022
Sold

Not Now
Acrylic on plywood
25.4 x 16.9cm (painting)
2022

What Followed
Acrylic on plywood
20 x 11.7cm (painting)
2022

Stranger to Myself
Acrylic on plywood
25.4 x 16.9cm (painting)
2022
Sold

Pity Mankind That Will Perish for Gold
Acrylic on plywood
28 x 20cm (painting)
2022

Any Given Day
Acrylic on plywood
20 x 11.7cm (painting)
2022
Sold

Out of Thin Air
Acrylic on plywood
30 x 22.5cm (painting)
2022
Sold

Not Knowing
Oil on linen
14 x 10in
2022
Sold