David Asher Brook

David Asher Brook was born in Australia, with a mixed heritage of Iraqi, Singaporean and English. He is distinguished by a diverse visual language of painting, tapestry and video art. He is a qualified Stonemason and Heritage Conservationist from the Sydney University School of Architecture.

David Asher Brook is a distinctive multidisciplinary artist whose work has been featured on several occasions in the NSW Parliament Plein Air Painting Prize as well as The Blake Prize, AGNSW Salon des Refuses, Paddington Art Prize and the Brett Whiteley Travelling Artist Scholarship.

I read a quote from the writer James Joyce a few months ago: ‘The important thing is not what we write but how we write…’ This made a lot of sense to me as an appropriate aim with painting and led me to the thought that everything I have is right here in front of me, if I could only see it and paint it in my own way. I started painting my family in the garden and places within walking distance from home. I’d take a walk, searching for the best place and paint there for hours. On the walk back I would realise that all the searching at the beginning was irrelevant for every step is a place that has all to offer, but that it took me hours of looking and painting to see it. Tomorrow I would have to rediscover this because knowing that was not enough to experience it again.

I was inspired by the idea and influence that David Bomberg had on Leon Kossoff in regards to the “the spirit in the mass” which helped me embrace a psychology of destruction, painting over what I previously held onto. Dispersing myself of paint, was a way of letting go of a naive perfection, which seems to come more effortlessly to others.

I would like to acknowledge my recent discussions about this process of looking, and finding a direct experiential voice with artist and friend Jonathan Harkham. In making these works, I feel yet again, and even more so the thirst to learn from life and nature. To look, experience and respond.

– David Asher Brook, 2025

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