It is a great privilege to unveil this collection of new David Beschi watercolour paintings, in this, his 83rd year.

David’s paintings typically feature charming, timeless, everyday scenes, with delicate landscapes providing a wonderful contrast against his more animated and whimsical portrayals with people. His deceptively simple paintings are characterized by a gestural approach, where intuitive control enables him to blend limited detail with intriguing levels of obscurity. His name is synonymous with a restrained palette of muted umbers, warm greys and soft-hued washes, with an occasional, inspired splash of colour. These skillfully executed new paintings offer a glimpse of a lifetime of memories from this private painter.

Sketching has always been at the essence of David’s practice and he has close to 60 sketchbooks, plus countless restaurant napkins, envelopes, backs of bills and scraps of paper with jottings, doodles, colour notes and musings. This provides the stimulus for his art and the paintings in this new exhibition, like others beforehand, are not contrived, but truly inspired by this precious resource; a life’s work.