Image: David Hume on location, photograph Isobel Hume.
David Hume is a South Australian visual artist who began exhibiting watercolours in the 1980s. Hume moved to abstract acrylic landscapes in the 1990s, before shifting to a primary focus on photography. His work is concerned with notions of landscape, place and perception and has always been tied to a quest for beauty and the sublime, probing how the ethereal can exist within the physical world.
Image: David Hume, Watching the Coast. Robe, South Australia (still), 2025, video, HD, single channel, 2 minutes, looped. Image courtesy the artist.
Why have you pursued a creative career?
I don’t really think I had a choice. It might sound a bit precious or melodramatic, but a life without creative practice seems – to me – bleak to the point of being unbearable. I know that I have been super-fortunate as many people do not have the choices, opportunities, or luck that I’ve had. It seems to me that there is always some small way in which it is possible to put creative practice into our lives, if we put our energies and our soul into it.
What are your key inspirations?
The beauty of nature has always been my main inspiration. I feel that a lot can be learnt about our place in the universe by considering the immensity of a cosmos that is so much greater than us. When I first became interested in art, I was studying physics at university. I guess my early scientific studies informed this thinking, but I also love how beauty is – for me – a real and ever-present thing that lies beyond the rational world.
Which South Australian artists do you admire?
Ruth Tuck, my early mentor, was a huge influence on me and many others. She expressed a confidence in me and my work, and opened my eyes to South Australian art. She also worked at a time post-WWII when South Australia really opened up and welcomed artists from shattered European countries. There was less globalisation during this time, and I feel the outlook in Australia grew by welcoming people from other cultures, where we obtained a broader world perspective that has enriched our arts practice ever since.
Which artists do you draw inspiration from?
Rather than individual artists, I am drawn to groups and movements within artistic practice. When I began painting, I was captivated by Matisse and the Fauves, but they grew from Impressionism, and Monet of course came across Turner’s work when he was in London escaping the Franco-Prussian war. It’s easy to see how Cezanne influenced Picasso in the genesis of Cubism. I like to imagine Matisse and Picasso eyeing each other off in Gertrude Stein’s salon before they would stomp off and try to outdo each other with the next masterpiece. I find that looking at those connections and following the mechanisms by which movements emerge is great fun and very beneficial. It makes things easier to understand too; it all makes sense when you see the connections.
Is there an artistic medium you’re wanting to, but are yet to try?
I always find myself drawn to the limits and peripheries of any particular medium. Currently, I am seeking and exploring the limits of what photography might become, by blurring the lines between traditional photographic practice, screen printing, oil painting – whatever I can imagine and where different media converge and overlap. I find exploring and combining traditional media to forge new directions particularly satisfying.
David Hume’s work is showing in ‘Collective Visions’, a group exhibition at Newmarch Gallery, running from 28 March 2025 to 3 May 2025. Find more details here.
Images: David Hume, Seascape with Storm Over Distant Coast. Robe, South Australia, 2025 archival pigment print mounted on dibond, diptych 120cm x 182cm, image courtesy the artist.