COSMOS - David Shillinglaw

About

“The british artist is renowned for exploring themes around the "mind human condition" – David works in this conflicted and messy space, which ultimately relates to the human condition: a relentless need for control within a disordered world. His vibrant, vital paintings present a chaotic system, in which natural forms, freely connected words and human features both burst from and are contained within grids, boxes and organised lines. Contradictory feelings of freedom and confinement, safety and claustrophobia, coexist within his works. 

As an artist, David wrestles with this equilibrium of order and disorder. He has returned numerous times to the Carl Jung quote: “In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.” His works speak of our all-consuming journey to figure out some form of neat structure. But they also suggest that we will never fully understand the world around us, and that is where the real meaning lies. 

David’s tangled, joyful works suggest that it is impossible to fully understand or claim ownership over anything in this life. When we hunt for the knowable, compliant, in essence ‘safe’ version of ourselves, others, and the world around us, we find ourselves blinkered. The beauty lies in giving ourselves to the cosmic chaos that surrounds us, and trusting that even if we cannot see it, there is an exquisite order behind it. It is perhaps only in fully giving ourselves up to the world, in accepting our role as one precarious part and not the author of it, that we can really begin to respect it, care for it, and—as David does with wild abandon—revel in its many sublime wonders.”

Text by Emily Steer for David´s book “Relax The Universe is Expanding”