David Shenton

David makes himself laugh at least two times a minute. Great wheezing chuckles as if he can’t quite contain the delight he finds in the world. Sit with him for five minutes and the idea of a linear conversation dissolves entirely. You're half a story behind and playing catch up. Something about a boy on a chariot and a dead pigeon on a string (more on this in a moment).

He invited me into his home. It was like walking into a very clever dream. A maximalist's haven. 

There were plates he’d rescued from a skip, leftovers from an artist’s heartbreak, now arranged as prized relics on the wall. Craft and art projects were everywhere. Lost objects now given new life. In the bathroom, the walls were papered in torn-out pages of his own book.

‍He chuckled, "Had to do something with the bloody things," already out the door and leading me to the next room.

‍

We stopped in front of one of his paintings. A comic strip painted onto a canvas. I read,

“From the Guildhall ArtGallery 'A Pythagorean school invaded by the Sybarites'

It shows the ascetic vegetarian scholars, being taunted by their decadent neighbours

who drive carriages through their cabbage patch... dragging a dead pigeon”

‍

None the wiser, I asked him what I was looking at. He told me he'd found himself standing in front of this thing, five meters wide, baroque, serious as a sermon but the story it was telling was ridiculous. So he came home and painted it again. 

‍

The more time I spent with David, the more I wanted to be like him. He reminded me what it feels like to be led by curiosity. That life is art and the joy is in finding the joke.

‍

‍

^{Siris Hill}

‍