On the eve of a major retrospective of the artist’s work, Dr Feelgood vocalist Pete Gage tells Dan Carrier that he always thought he should have been a household name
Thursday, 20th March — By Dan Carrier
Heavy Traffic, by David Evans [Images: The Artist’s Estate Courtesy of Liss Llewellyn and Three Highgate]
THEY range from detailed studies of rural scenes – with elements of the modern world seeping into the bucolic imagery – to a plethora of places where people congregate. Clubs, venues, football matches – David Evans’ eye found topics he wanted to cover in a wide range of places.
Now Three Gallery in Highgate is hosting a major retrospective of this unique artist, whose works epitomise a 20th-century style.
David, who died in 1988 aged 58 after being knocked off his bike, was unique in his approach: he worked in watercolour and produced giant imagery. This is the first retrospective of his work since 2018 and has been prompted by a recent discovery of a cache of his work in his studio.
Singer Pete Gage, who was lead vocalist in the R’n’B band Dr Feelgood, first met David when he visited the artist’s record shop as a teenager.
“I loved collecting vinyl,” he recalls. “He had a shop in Brompton Road, just round the corner from us.
“I was interested in buying second-hand jazz albums and I remember the first time I went in – I bought a second-hand copy of Bolero by Ravel and a Charlie Parker LP. We struck up a friendship. He set about educating me, in a roundabout and ad hoc way, about classical music.”
Pete was soaking up art and music in 60s London and David offered a cultural gateway.
“I was into jazz and loved Thelonious Monk. I tried to listen to everything I could – I would go up to the John Dankworth Club up in Oxford Street and the Flamingo Club. The gigs often didn’t get going until well after 10pm – and I always had to catch the last bus home, so I had to drag myself away when things were getting started.”
David was in his 30s when Pete first met him.
“He gave me an education,” he says. “He taught me a lot of things about music, art, food, conversation. He became a father figure.”
As Pete grew up, David was always on hand.
“David was genuine and generous,” he adds.
David Evans
“Aged 19, I went round Europe hitchhiking and I got to Munich where I met a band and joined them as vocalist.
“They were called the Sunny Boys and they asked if I could write down the lyrics for a load of songs in English they wanted to cover. I sang with them for six months, going through Germany and Holland. David would write and send me money to help me get by.”
Later, Pete earned a wage in The Pot – a restaurant run by David’s partner, Basil.
“Around this time I went to their house and there was a picture on the wall. I could not believe it – it really threw me. It was massive – of a great big ship, covering most of the wall and coming out at me. I just thought – wow. I realised then he was not just a sketcher.”
Art had been a key element in David’s life. He had studied under Keith Vaughan at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and an early commission saw him create a collage for Sir Terence Conran’s first restaurant, the Soup Kitchen, in 1953.
“He would sketch in the shop a lot,” he says. “He would do portraits using just a biro, of people who came in, people who he knew. But when I saw that painting I realised he was seriously good.”
Subject matter revealed his interests.
“He had come from a fairly upper-class background but he was incredibly down to earth and wanted to be in touch with ‘ordinary’ people,” says Pete.
“He was interested in what was fresh and interesting. That motivated him when it came to subject matter – he chose topics that reflected his life.
“He’d come to watch my band and he loved creating what he had seen in this music world. He would fill books with sketches that he could convert into paintings.”
David concentrated on watercolours.
“It was a medium he loved,” says Pete. “He had such control – it might have been a technical thing that drew him to watercolours. He did not like heavy oils. And nobody was creating pieces comparable, the scale and size.”
Man and cat in sitting room, by David Evans
David and Basil left London in 1968 to take on a smallholding in Suffolk. It gave David fresh subjects to gaze out on.
“One of the most important things to him was the landscape,” says Pete. “He had a bird’s eye vision – he wanted to be a painter that peered down. A lot of his landscapes were from high viewpoints. When he painted concerts, he loved to paint large audiences. He liked sports with lots of spectators. He did plenty of images with lots of strange looking faces.”
While David was beginning to earn recognition before he died, his works have not been widely displayed since.
“For many years I thought he would never get the recognition his genius deserves,,” Pete says. “The works can be idiosyncratic – but I have always thought he should be a household name. He died on the cusp of becoming famous. Regular shows were increasing his popularity.”
Seeing his works today reminds Pete of happy times.
“I would watch him painting in his little room at the back of the farmhouse,” he says. “He would put on a record and paint. He was a hard task master, very self-judging. But it was about how he saw the world.”
Pete believes David belongs alongside his contemporaries David Hockney and Peter Blake, and his mentor, Keith Vaughan, who taught at the Slade, Camberwell and the Central School of Art.
“He was subtly figurative,” he says. “He was always determined to see great artists and composers as human beings who created great works of art.”
The watercolours, which span well over one metre in height or breadth, provoke a take on what his interests: there are nods to the glam-rock and hippie eras, and David’s work also reveals his politics.
“His compositions are characterised by a kaleidoscopic vision of Thatcher’s Britain: an era of urban redevelopment, the Falklands War, industrial unrest, nuclear power, and the Cold War,” adds Pete.
“Transition is everywhere: new roads carve their way through the countryside. Fighter jets cast their shadows across the landscape. The scars left by industrial plants, pylons and landfill permeate throughout.”
• David Evans: Twist and Shout is at Three Gallery, 3 Highgate High Street, N6 5JR, from
April 4 to September 14. See www.threehighgate.com
