Shadows (3)

David Thorpe is a British multimedia artist best known for probing the relationship between nature, objects, and their makers: his solo exhibitions combine drawing, wallpaper, sculpture, and ceramic tile, culminating in a conquest and integration of lived space. Intrinsic to Thorpe's art are geometric and ornamental structures, with vegetal forms being his favored leitmotif, his work harkening back to the earthly delights of the nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts movement, as well as the democratizing aesthetic ideals of William Morris and John Ruskin. In Shadows (3), the chromatic trellis alludes to the endpapers of books published by Morris's Kelmscott Press as well as Thorpe's own preoccupation with the environment. In addition to turning to the natural world as his chosen subject matter, Thorpe utilizes natural materials--like bark, hay, sand and coal--in his works on paper. Often incorporating "time" and "joint labor" in the media description of his works, Thorpe's large pattern-covered objects have been executed with the collaborative assistance of skilled artisans trained in recreating labor-intensive pre-1900s recipes for making paint.