MARSHAL FROM "NAPOLEON AND HIS STAFF" (1971) Painting by David Sankey

Dave’s parents told him that, as an infant, he was always drawing, but he didn’t take up painting until he had left school and his brother bought him a ‘paint by numbers’ kit.  Instead of painting the picture in the kit, he copied a painting by Meissonier called “Napoleon and his Staff” from the cover of an LP sleeve.  From that point he got hooked, and regards Meissonier as the man who taught him to paint, as it was by copying some of the artist’s meticulously-detailed pictures that he discovered the techniques to achieve the effects he wanted.  He also admires the work of Alma-Tadema, Atkinson Grimshaw, John Singer Sargent, and Norman Rockwell. After about thirty pictures he stopped copying other people’s paintings -- the way that all classical artists have learned their trade -- and concentrated on copying photographs.  He paints for personal enjoyment, which he derives from the painting process rather than from hanging the finished pictures on the wall.  He can seldom work up much enthusiasm for commissions if the subject doesn’t appeal to him, as he would get little pleasure out of the painting, although there is some satisfaction in the recipients’ pleasure with the results. Painting in oils, his technique is to apply the paint very thinly and to use watercolour brushes to get the degree of detail he needs. Having begun by copying Napoleonic paintings, he copied Courvoisier brandy ads, for their detail and textures of velvet, gold, leather, wood, hair, silk, brocade, fruit, and glass. From this, he started a series of paintings of women in natural or provocative poses. On a much larger scale, he painted a prehistoric panorama on the walls and ceiling of his children’s playroom in the family home in Farnborough, depicting dinosaurs, and predated “Jurassic Park” by twelve years. Around the same time, his proximity to the annual air shows, resulted in a series of aircraft paintings. In 1993, he won the coveted first prize at the annual Farnborough Festival of Art for a study of the zebras in Ngoro Ngoro Crater he’d photographed on holiday. On moving to Newark, he created murals on the bathroom walls with scenes from Alma-Tadema’s Roman paintings. Following several visits to New York, he painted a series of highly detailed nighttime and wet weather scenes of Times Square. In the process of researching Meissonier, he met Professor Constance Cain Hungerford, the world authority on the painter, who had this to say about Dave’s work -- "I found your own paintings absolutely fascinating, both for the variety of subjects and the eye you bring to your choices and your rendering.” And in the last few years he took on the greatest challenge for a painter and produced a number of portraits of friends and neighbours who had passed away and given the paintings to their families as his tribute to their memory. Two of Dave’s paintings were listed as Highly Commended in the 2023 King Lear competition.

• Nationality: UNITED KINGDOM
• Date of birth : unknown date
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary British Artists