David Cromack, currently President of the Welland Valley Art Society and the organiser of its Spring and Autumn exhibitions, graduated with a Fine Art degree from the Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University) in the 1970s. A career in magazine journalism, and latterly in publishing books (with wife Hilary) through his Buckingham Press company, meant that artwork was relegated to hobby status until recently.
Though he has shown work in the WVAS exhibitions in the past five years, the exhibition at Gallery Stamford is his first one-man show in the UK.

On display will be three distinct strands of his painting:
i) Semi-realist landscapes in which trees are the dominant subject matter
ii) A suite of paintings that utilise the dot technique pioneered by Australian Aborginals
iii) A series of mixed-media abstract paintings

David, who is Chairman of Peterborough Bird Club, says that his landscapes are conventional compositions inspired by his love of the great outdoors and trees in particular. These works are as far removed as possible from the abstract and dot paintings, which have no discernible subject content and rely on colour and texture for their impact.

A starting point for several of these works is a self-imposed goal of trying to create a visual equivalent of ambient music, a concept championed by electronic music pioneer Brian Eno.
It is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. A form of instrumental music, it usually lacks formal composition, rhythm, or structured melody, but uses textural layers of sound to encourage a sense of calm or contemplation. David hopes his ‘ambient paintings’ also have a meditative quality.