When David Lake first saw the painting by prominent American artist Edward Hopper, it was his least favourite.
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Reproduced on page or screen, he knew Hopper’s work well, but he had yet to see an original.
It wasn’t until he visited an English museum this year with a Hopper exhibition that he came face-to-face with his least favourite work.
But this time something had changed.
“When I saw the painting, it just leapt off the wall, full of life and it glowed,” Lake said.
And it clicked.
“Any reproduction is relatively dead,” Lake said.
“Original work captures far more of the substance (of the artist).”
During his current exhibition at Gallery Pejean, To Silence, Lake received several requests from people overseas about his work, who discovered him online
“Well I’m not interested unless they’ve seen the original work and really know the substance of it,” he said.
Some people approached him as a way of making money by trying to sell space in a coffee table book.
“If it’s genuine, they’ve seen the original work.”
Three of his works had sold from the website before the exhibition had been on the walls for more than a day.
But for Lake, the difference was that they had also seen and gauged other original pieces of his work.
By not going to exhibitions and seeing art on the walls, people missed out on the reality of the work, Lake said.
To Silence is Lake’s third solo exhibition at Gallery Pejean in Launceston.
The exhibition is part of Lake’s search to find silence.
While it was always elusive, he still sought to bring calmness to his mind.
It was less about finding silence in the content of his paintings and more about the quietness he hoped to find with each stroke of the painting process, Lake said.
Some of the initial sketches for his work he created in 2010, but the majority of his work he started and finished after his last solo exhibition in April 2016.
On first perusal, many of his pieces look like they’re snapshots of familiar places around Northern Tasmania.
But Lake said what might start with inspiration from a photo would become figment of his imagination.
“It’s usually some aspect, a reflection of light, that captures my eye and then I go away and work with it.”
Lake often experienced a separation from his painting after they were finished.
“Sometimes I see a painting and it’s like greeting an old friend.”
- To Silence, the latest solo exhibition by artist David Lake will be displayed at the Gallery Pejean until October 28.