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exhibition Artist David Kenning celebrated fifteen years of living
in Spain with an exhibition at the new cultural centre in Frigiliana, the village where he
now lives. The exhibition, entitled “Aqui Estamos” (Here We Are), is both
retrospective and forward looking. It includes
his first Spanish painting of the church of El Salvador, Nerja, landscapes of Essex, where
he used to live and illustrations of the journey which he and his wife Anna made eight
years ago which formed his London exhibition, “In the Footsteps of Laurie Lee.”
David and Anna
followed the route through Southern Spain taken by one of Britain’s best-loved
writers 50 years ago, and David painted pictures of the places that Laurie Lee had
visited.
The struggle
 David has always been primarily a landscape painter, but a
close encounter with death some time after
that journey, when he was in a coma for a week following a heart operation, virtually
destroyed his desire to paint. It seemed that his life force had deserted him. Noel Oddy,
director of Highgate Art Gallery, London, described him as having “fallen off his
horse.” David found it a huge effort to
“climb back on” but felt at the same time that life would be empty without his
work.
The “jarapa” (literally carpet) paintings were
completed in 1998 and were David’s attempt to regain his enthusiasm. By studying commonplace objects and painting them
with precision, he succeeded. Now, his most
recent work shows a complete and surprising change of format, containing humour and echoes
of Chagall.
From Essex to Spain
It
was Anna’s love of Spain
,
where she had lived for several years in her twenties, that drew them to Frigiliana following David’s early retirement from
his post as lecturer in graphic design at South East Essex College of Arts and
Technology.Their early days in Spain
were
not easy. They lived in a tiny studio apartment in the nearby resort of Nerja and dealt
with all the problems associated with the conversion of an old and semi ruined village
house into the tranquil and attractive home which they now occupy. The magnificent views
from their small terrace have been the subject of several of David’s paintings
The
welcome
Anna recalls how
they were welcomed by their Spanish neighbours who told them that they had chosen to live
in the best part of the village “where we all love and care for one another and hope
to love and care for you too.” Certainly
they are an established part of local life. Anna teaches yoga and David was one of the
founder members of “las vecinas (neighbours) de Frigiliana”
established to help preserve this ancient village.
New
development
 They were both distressed by recent changes, especially the
large number of modern houses which are being built. “We felt the village is so
beautiful that it should be protected from the modernisation which has destroyed the
character of so many Spanish towns. We have always valued the fact that this is a working
Spanish village with traditional values, we would hate to see the way of life
undermined,” says David. “On the other hand we have to accept change, which can
bring with it increased employment and prosperity, and hope that the new buildings will,
when completed, harmonise with the old, whitewashed houses and cobbled streets which led
us to settle here.”
Staying
put
Certainly Anna and David would
not dream of leaving. The beauty of their surroundings and the warmth of their neighbours
have more than fulfilled all their hopes, and David’s exhibition shows that he is now
firmly in the saddle as an innovative painter.
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