Figure In a Room, 2024

I painted this at my parents-in-law a few hours before heading to the airport. When I returned a year later, I found the painting where I had left it and continued it. I like painting from life as there are fewer barriers; I feel like I am one step closer to the subconscious before I even start.

Living in Sydney, Australia, with mixed English, Iraqi and Singaporean heritage, David Asher Brook is a visual artist working in painting, tapestry and video art. He is a qualified Stonemason and holds a Graduate Diploma in Heritage Conservation from the Sydney University School of Architecture.

David has been a finalist in the NSW Parliament Plein Air Painting Prize four times and a finalist in The Blake Prize, Salon des Refuses, Paddington Art Prize, and the Brett Whiteley Travelling Artist Scholarship. He was the winner of the 2010 Waverley Art Oil Painting Prize and the 2016 Eva Breuer Memorial Prize.

For John Cruthers, Sydney-based art advisor, curator, writer and collector, David Asher Brooks´ work has …qualities deeper than technique, such as sensibility, attitude and heart. And I think this is what is special about David´s painting. In fact, what is special about David´s paintings is David – his life, his thoughts, his feelings – and his willingness to share these with us in the paintings… they breathe love, wonder, tenderness, abandonment, compassion, loss – and faith. ( John Cruthers 2019).