Welcome to my new website of Dartmoor and other landscape paintings that will hopefully compliment my other website of Seascapes and coastal pictures.

In the course of time I will be adding new pictures to this website so keep a lookout for that special view that you always wanted on your wall!

I have tried to make this new site as enjoyable and easy to use as possible. The pictures of course take centre stage and I have endeavoured to make them as large and clear as possible. I have also added the feature of showing the prints in the different frames. I hope this will make your choice of frame a lot easier.

Of course, if you wish to contact me about anything I will be more than happy to oblige.

David Young

Contact

September 2022

News

David Young Exhibition

September 2022

Wildwood Arts

Featuring a new unique work of art like no other.

Two years in it’s creation, a lifetime in it’s coming.

Art at it’s most visually striking, relevant and thought provoking.

Visit if you believe in the power of art.



Tuesday 5th January 2021


A new Anthropocene Paintings page

After such a long time I have finally uploaded a new page on my website devoted to a body of work that tackles subjects that are disturbing and worrying but have to be expressed in paint.

I have titled them my Anthropocene Paintings. For those of you who are net yet familiar with this term I supply the definition below.

The Anthropocene

 meaning: The Anthropocene is a geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change.


Thurday 22nd April 2021

A tale for our times - wildlife at our door.

A Hawthorn stands outside my back door of the cottage. Not many people would want it there.

I do.

It casts welcome shade in the summer, is glorious when in flower and produces a good crop of edible berries come the Autumn. It is also home and nesting site for Wood Pigeons and a place of cover for a mass of other birds that hunt for food amongst the ivy. The Sparrow Hawk also uses it as a launch pad for its hunting missions. All part & parcel of life & death.

However, it's stay of execution from the hands of of modern, obsessively tidy homo sapiens has had extraordinarily beneficial results.

Due to it’s semi woodland shade Lesser celandine has thrived around my porch. Come Spring its brief flowering uplifts the spirit as I go & back & forth through the porch. This plant is considered by many to be an invasive  weed.

Not I.

The last few years I have noticed a strange creature amongst the celandine & primroses. It moves fairly slowly, is large at about 1.5 inches, is increasingly rare due to humans, and has a remarkable life cycle. There is now a thriving population within feet of my back door!











The Violet Oil Beetle at the artists cottage, Wheal Maria.










Here is a full description of this wonderful creature as described by  Buglife.

Violet oil beetles have a striking appearance despite their underlying black coloration, as light is refracted off their lustrous carapace to give them a purple, blue or green sheen. When they first emerge as adults, their abdomen is small and compact but, as they gorge themselves on lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) and soft grasses, their abdomen becomes distended and can extend some way beyond the tip of their wings. They can often be found sunning themselves on paths and females are sometimes seen digging burrows in patches of bare ground, in which they lay their eggs.

Juvenile Violet oil beetles are tiny, black, louse-like creatures that emerge in spring and lie in wait on flowers for solitary mining bees that visit the flowers to collect nectar and pollen. The triungulins take advantage of the mining bees, firstly by hitching a lift on their back, and again in the bees’ nest, by eating the food so diligently collected by the bee for its own young; the beetle equivalent of a cuckoo. Despite their coercive nature, Violet oil beetles are important for conservation as they are indicators of strong mining bee populations and of high quality, wildflower-rich habitats.

Once widespread across much of the UK, recent records collected by Buglife in 2011 showed that the distribution of Violet oil beetles has dramatically shrunk, particularly from the east of England. If you were to draw an imaginary line directly north from the Isle of Wight, the area to the east of this line has had only three records since the end of the 1960s! Declines are also evident across the North of England, the Midlands and Wales. The remaining strongholds for the Violet oil beetle are the South West, the Peak and Lake Districts and Scotland.

Violet oil beetles are strongly dependent upon the long-term maintenance of wildflower-rich, semi-natural grasslands. It is the loss of these habitats to development, agricultural intensification and changes in land use that are thought to have caused their decline.

So the moral of this story is humans really know bugger all about what goes on about them so let things go a little wild and reap the benefits!


Thursday 3rd December 2020

I was rooting around in a drawer the other day looking for long lost photos of a few paintings I did many years ago and lo & behold I found them. What a relief. It was  certainly worth re-discovering them.

The painting I did below was at Will Farm just a bit further on from Horndon near Mary Tavy, Dartmoor.










Friday 14th Febuary 2020

Sold again!

I have been thrilled again to have sold another painting to the lovely couple mentioned below. They have told me how much enjoyment ‘Skinny Dippers’ has given them and wanted to add to their collection. So, today my painting ‘November, Dartmoors Ancient Woodland’ has been collected from Wildwood Arts to join its companion.

November-Dartmoors Ancient Woodlands painting by David William Young








Monday 22nd July 2019

Sold

I was thrilled to have sold Skinny Dippers on the River Dart to the loveliest couple today. It could not have gone to a better home. I was honoured they travelled so far to come and view it in my studio. (and sad to see it go!)

Such a shame that a painting that depicts innocence and fun was rejected by a certain South Devon gallery and never had the chance to be seen by the public. Needless to say I will not be censored by anyone and we parted company by mutual consent.

vive le plaisir et la joie!

Skinny Dipping the River Dart Dartmoor by David William Young
















Skinny Dipping, The River Dart by David William Young


Exhibition

Thursday 27th - Saturday 29th June 2019

Butchers Hall, Tavistock (next to Town Square)

I will be having another opportunity  to exhibit ‘The Woodland Glade & The Hand of Man (see below) at the forthcoming Tavistock Mining Heritage exhibition at Butchers Hall, Tavistock. (Just off the main square)

I strongly recommend you go and see this very unusual and epic painting which shows and explains in great detail the toil, hardship and ultimate desecration of the land that went with the mining boom in the Tamar Valley. I have produced a detailed brochure fully explaining the picture and its history.

The Exhibition is only on for three days (despair!) So make sure to pencil it in.


The Woodland Glade and the Hand of Man

by

David William Young



















January 2019

As I mentioned on my home page my painting continues to evolve and move in exciting and challenging new directions. One such piece I exhibited a couple of years ago is ‘The Woodland Glade and the Hand of Man’ depicting the less savoury impact on my local area by ‘the hand of of man’. It depicts the human impact both present and historically by using both canvas and frame.

3rd November 2018

Wildwood Arts in Horrabridge, Devon have just taken my  painting ‘November - Dartmoors Ancient Woodlands’ for displaying at their Winter exhibition will will run till Christmas.

It is a painting tat took so long to complete such are the complexities of atmosphere and detail that went into it. When I completed making the frame (which in itself took two and a half days) and inserted the finished painting the final result I thought was totally stunning. It’s a painting that evokes the cold early mornings of November on those damp, misty downs, valleys and  ancient woods of Darmoor.

I hope you can make it to the gallery to view it yourself.









16th March 2018

My goodness. A year has gone by without an update. Too busy painting. I’m currently working on a double triptych which is a massive project which will take years not months. With the demise of most of my galleries I am now free to pursue exciting new projects that will really push me. The manacles are off and I have such a lot to paintings to create before I end up on the proverbial compost heap.

Steward Woodland Community

Talking of compost heaps and my semi woodland living I heard via an email of the demise/destruction of the Steward Community Woodland on Dartmoor. These lovely folk have been living in their wood for many, many years in low impact dwellings and showing the rest of us how to live a gentle impact life without resorting to trashing the planet. After all these years Dartmoor National Park Authority has finally got its way and turfed them out and into the world of sapien monoculture. Sad, sad,sad.

I reproduce a few photos of this Community on my website as a lasting memory to these people and their living home. I finish with a photo of the new development a mile or two up the road in Moretonhampstead, Darmoor.


Steward Community Woodland

















































 













Proper housing.  

Moretonhampstead, Dartmoor National Park (a stone’s throw from Steward Wood)









31st March 2017

Thirty years ago today  I gave up my job and walked out of an office to become a full time artist. It was simply the best and most rewarding thing I ever did…….and do!


September 2016

I continue to paint a work that I have meant to do some years ago but have only finally got down to it recently. It’s certainly not a painting the public will want to buy but that's what being an artist is. However in conjunction with this I have been on Dartmoor and have become very excited about a place  I visited. I was working out dimensions, making the canvas and painting the composition  earlier in the week. It will now be on hold till I complete the other painting. What are these paintings? I will reveal all when they are complete!

All painting came to a halt yesterday as I picked the plums growing outside my bedroom window. Yes, I know it sounds decadently romantic but it is the ideal place as it is in full south facing sun - perfect for ripening. So I spent most of the day harvesting , stoning and preserving. They look so delicious in the jars I have taken a photograph of them in the bedroom window with the plum espalier outside.













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Mayflower Galleries Tavistock update

After providing a wonderful service through their excellent gallery, Tony & Audrey Whitehead of Mayfower Galleries in Tavistock have finally retired  so ending a long era of selling my artwork in Tavistock. This is particulary sad with it being my ‘home town’ and the base with which I started my career. There doesn’t seem to be a suitable replacement yet but I am keeping alert to any possibilities in the town and will keep you updated on this website if there is any good news. In the meantime if there is any painting or print that you might need do feel free to contact me direct so I can help you in any way.

Febuary 2016

17/2/2016

I recently completed a painting I have been working on for several months.  It is a seascape with 25 gulls & a shag in it. There is a lot of movement and activity in the painting hence why it took so long.

In the meantime I came across this portrait I did of a small Lurcher many decades ago. When establishing myself as an artist I frequently did animal portraits to earn some pennies.

Lurcher painting by David William Young

Lurcher painting by David William Young


October 2015

I went down to Mayflower Arts on the Barbican, Plymouth this week armed with with two Dartmoor paintings under my arms. Both of them feature a Hawthorn as their subject but both are entirely different in their character. They are now on show at the Gallery so feel free to go down and have a look at them. They are both for sale. For enquiries go to Mayflower Arts.






Hawthorn in a Dartmoor Sunset by David William Young. Original oil painting for viewing & sale at Mayflower Arts.










May Blossom, Dartmoor by David William Young. Sold


September 2015

Today I am not an artist, nor a gardener, nor a house builder but a cook. The greenhouse is full of tomatoes that have only narrowly survived this years blight. So I went and picked them this morning and made them all into soup. I added apples, basil, tomatillos, parsley, fennel seeds, nasturtiums, coriander, curry powder, salt and pepper. After chaos in the kitchen in which I had to use 3 pressure cookers and a large frying pan on my small Rayburn I finally procured 17 half litre kilner jars of very tasty tomato soup to help me through the dark winter days . Crazy, I will never make a living as an artist. (But would I be happy going to the supermarket and buying 17 tins of Heinz  Tomato soup?)


     

 


















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