DAVID GILES “DRINKING THE SWEETNESS OF TRANQUILITY”

OPENING 6.30 PM FRIDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER

David Giles, winner of sixteen art awards and recognized as “one of Australia’s most exciting contemporary painters” will be holding a solo exhibition of new works at Elements Art Gallery.

Although a veteran of 24 solo exhibitions, and exhibitions in New York, Sydney and Melbourne, it is Giles first solo show with ‘Elements’ and one which is creating a lot of excitement as it also coincides with the official opening of the gallery at its new location. “We are so pleased to have Davids work at such a milestone for “Elements,” says gallery manager
Sue Nash.

The passion to paint occurred in a most unusual and pivotal manner for Giles. Having survived a near drowning in the Southern Ocean near Walpole fifteen years ago, the ensuing years have been consumed with a gnawing preoccupation to “reconnect through artmaking, with that luminous sense of a mystical spiritual reality, a sense of the deeper reality beneath the everyday appearance of things.” Recalling his near death experience, he said, “Once I let go of the struggle, I was surprised to find my awareness had not ceased. The experience became intensely ecstatic and there was a sense of being drawn into the light, a sense of complete calm and profound curiosity.”

Giles believes that his latest body of work, ”Drinking The Sweetness Of Tranquility” is the closest he has come to expressing the depth and intensity of his direct experience of the mystical.

The title of the exhibition is appropriately found in the Buddhist ‘Sutta Nipata 257.’ “Having drunk the sweetness of solitude and also the sweetness of tranquility, one becomes free from fear and wrongdoing while drinking the sweetness of the joy of truth.’