David Bryant
A Photo of David Bryant
From the age of seven I have been captivated by everything to do with our aviation history during the last war. It happened one day when a formation of aircraft I had never seen before flew over my home in Kent. It wasn’t until later that my father explained that they were making the feature film ‘The Battle of Britain’ and the aircraft I had seen were supposed to be the very ones he had so feared during the war (he was London lad). I remember being surprised at the very real effect that they seemed to have had on him. (Apparently he nearly crashed the car when he saw them)
I was hooked…… I had always had a small talent for drawing and proceeded to cover all of my school books and just about every piece of paper I owned with pictures of Spitfires and Hurricanes, Messerschmitts and Heinkels. I built models and read endless books about my new heroes. Men like Bob Stanford Tuck, Adolph Galland, Sailor Malan and Peter Townsend, great names that resonate with me just as much now nearly forty years later.
As I grew older I was distracted by many changes and obligations that always occur in the lives of everyone. But I never lost my fascination for the subject and always found myself drawn back to my boyhood obsession. Painting aircraft and the battles they were involved in, was always going to happen and I honed my skills by painting whenever I found the time. I learnt indirectly from the Masters of the genre, the likes of Michael Turner, Frank Wooton, Mark Postlethwaite and the incomparable Robert Taylor and used some of their ideas in forging an artistic identity of my own.
David Bryant
This artist currently has no prints available.
