Cuadro

David Hewitt's recent suite of landscape paintings represent refigured ruins of ancient civilizations.  The paintings of sites such as Baalbek in Lebanon and Petra in Jordan reflect society's conscious collective desire to preserve repositories of culture and invite tourists to explore the inevitable process of decay.  Hewitt does not portray the sites as they are, rather the images are refigured and do not represent a plausible, natural reality.  Unlike the realists who advance compositions from one image, Hewitt composes landscapes that never existed.  His work could be described as a visual memory; he strives to accurately depict the sensations emitted from a visual experience and impart this impression on his viewers. In doing so, Hewitt transforms the image of a very real environment into something whimsical, resulting in a vision that simultaneously aspires to depict an awareness of reality, as well as a desire for fantasy.

David Hewitt currently lives in the UAE and teaches Design at the American University of Sharjah.