David Hewitt was born in 1952 in West Palm Beach, Florida. He received his Masters degree from the School of Art and Architecture, Cornell University. Yearning for a different environment, he left the United States for Ecuador, where he lived for 17 years. It was living in Ecuador, removed from the United States and the politics of discourse and post-modernism, that had a tremendous impact on his subject matter as well as on his style of painting.
Hewitt’s journey to Madrid in 1981 also had a great impact on the art that he would later produce. This visit left him enamoured by Catholic Baroque painters, contemporary Spanish Realism and the work of Antonio Lopez Garcia. It was at this point that he completely detached himself from any ‘American Art’ influences.
Drawn by the mystery that is so often associated with the Middle East, Hewitt eventually moved to Sharjah, UAE in 2000. His recent return to landscape painting was a result of this change and also a consequence of his desire to represent the sense of displacement elicited when living in an unfamiliar environment.
Hewitt’s recent work could be described as a visual memory; he strives to accurately depict the sensations emitted from a visual experience and impart this impression on his viewers. In doing so, Hewitt transforms the image of a very real environment into something whimsical, resulting in a vision that simultaneously aspires to depict an awareness of reality, as well as a desire for fantasy. David Hewitt currently lives in the UAE and teaches Design at the American University of Sharjah.
