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David Parfitt ARCA NEAC Biography
DAVID PARFITT was born in 1943 at Pontypool, Monmouthshire and grew up in Blaenavon, in those days a mining town at the head of the Afon Llwyd valley. He studied painting and drawing at Newport College of Art and at the Royal College of Art where he won various scholarships and prizes. These included a David Murray Landscape Award, an Abbey Minor scholarship to travel in Italy and a J. Milner Kite Award which enabled him to retrace the steps of Matisse and the Cubists through southern France.
His early paintings were of family and friends, and of the gaunt mountains and industrial valleys of South Wales. Fifty years on he lives at Strand on the Green, for many centuries a working stretch of London’s river. Here he paints the 19th century railway bridge spanning the tidal Thames, with the foreshore, the tower blocks and brewery chimneys, and the towpath, its pubs and the people and clamorous water birds that frequent them. The effects of changing light and seasons, and the meetings and contrasts between the man-made and the natural, are constant themes in his work. In this fusion of the old and the new he has found an echo of his Welsh childhood.
David Parfitt was elected as a member of the New English Art Club in November 1999. He shows regularly with the Club, most recently at Messum’s in June 2011 in an exhibition of selected NEAC members paintings called The Magic and Poetry of Everyday life. His first solo exhibition with Messum's opens in October 2012.
EDUCATION
1963 – 1966
Royal College of Art
1959 – 1963
Newport College of Art
1955 – 1959
Monmouth School
1954 – 1955
Abersychan Grammar School
MEMBERSHIPS
Elected to the New English Art Club, 1999
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2009
‘NEAC Artists at the Geedon Gallery’, Fingringhoe, Colchester, Essex
2005 - 2010
Small Paintings Group, Piers Feetham Gallery, London SW6
2004 - 2007
Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Mall Galleries, London WI
2006 ‘Artists’ Kew’, Kew Gardens Gallery, Kew, London W4
2003
‘The View: an Exhibition about Richmond Hill’, Waterstones, London W1
1991 – 2003
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London W1
2002
NEAC Auction Exhibition at Sotheby’s, London W1
2002
NEAC/RA’s Exhibition, Friends’ Room, Royal Academy of Arts, London W1
2001
‘Painters and Draughtsmen’, Frank T Sabin Gallery, London W1
2000
‘Thames, Tide and Towpath’, Piers Feetham Gallery (solo), London SW6
1996&1999
‘The Discerning Eye,’ Mall Galleries, London W1
1997
‘Thames, Bridge and Boatyard’, Attendi, London W4
1997
‘Northern Painter, Southern Light’, Attendi, London W4
1992&1995
Michael Simpson Ltd, London W1 (solo)
1992
Frank Vooren, Amsterdam
1991
Royal Watercolour Society, Bankside, London SE1
1987
Thos. Agnew & Sons, London W1 (solo)
1986
Fine Art Trade Guild, London W1 (solo)
Hugh Dunn Memorial Award, 1966
Abbey Minor Scholarship, 1966
J. Milner Kite Award, 1966
Anstruther Award, 1964
RCA Life Painting Prize, 1964
David Murray Landscape Award, 1963
"Images of St Paul’s in the 21st Century"
An exhibition of work to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Cathedral’s completion. Asgill House Trust and the St. Paul’s Cathedral Foundation 2010.
"The Magic and Poetry of Everyday Life. Paintings Past and Present from the New English Art Club"
Exhibition catalogue, Messum’s 2010
"The New English - A History of the New English Art Club" by Kenneth McConkey
Royal Academy of Arts 2006
"Artist’s Kew"
An exhibition of contemporary works. Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew 2006
"The View"
An Exhibition about Richmond Hill. Asgill House Trust in association with the London’s Arcadia Partnership and the Petersham Trust 2003.
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David Parfitt 2012
Studio Publications 2012
David Parfitt elsewhere on the web