Threadneedle Prize finalist David Storey is a British figurative painter. His psychologically charged paintings are about memory, with half-remembered people and places emerging from complex layers of texture and colour.

‘Each of my paintings is based on a found image of some sort, an image that somehow resonates. I then embark on a process of unlocking the image through a series of sketches and experiments. This journey of development and discovery can take anything from 10 days to 10 years until a kind of alchemy takes place and things seem to harmonise of their own accord in a way that can be very rewarding.

I paint in an expressionistic way using rags and sponges because the physical marks and textures are a fundamental element of what I am trying to achieve. The challenge for me though is to retain an economy of execution – an effortless effort’

The expressionistic way that David paints, allows him to make marks which lend themselves to the creation of intensely engaging, evocative and at times chilling, depictions of human form and place. David’s work is unlike anything we have shown at the gallery before and we are absolutely delighted to have his work here at Highgate Contemporary Art.