From the WE3 Catalogue
David Shepherd is a representative many painters of his generation, who are intent non investigating the ‘hard nut’ of modern painting - the problem of representing solid objects on a flat, two dimensional surface. The act of manipulating the play of elements between depth and flatness permeates the whole of his work to date. He asks us to consider the question, is the painting an object solid from front to back ? - he tries to convince us of that idea - his paintings extend back five or six inches - an uncommonly heavy base for an easel painting; or again, is the surface field all there is ? - a wafer thin colour figure perched hesitatingly on its surrounding field - something that could just as well be stencilled onto something already there. Could not all his colour planes inscribed on a flat surface without adding perceptibly to its thickness.
In the context of David Shepherd’s work the traditionally simple game of illusion proves loaded with complications which provide him with new ways of dealing with a more energised and complex picture space, one that read simultaneously flat and illusionist. THe development of his paintings show an increasing involvement with the business of coaxing the deeper space of three dimensional projection on a two dimensional surface by using shapes that imply both actual and virtual space.
In his current series David Shepherd centres the paintings’ action by choosing to concentrate on the ‘inside’ of the picture in the form of a centralised, self contained block that occupies the innermost area of the rectangle. His decision to organise in this way is different from much colour-field painting today, which consists of filling the paint uniformly from edge to edge,treating every square inch of the painting surface as an evenly packed continuum of colour energy. In these works , the painting’s pressure builds up gradually until the rectangle is totally saturated. On the other hand, David Shepherd’s centred block asserts itself as a separate entity detached from the painting’s edge, operating as a single, contained focus.
At this point we find David Shepherd attempting to resolve a particular formal problem that puts his work in the company of a number of hard-edge painters of today. I stems from the flatness and depth investigations mentioned earlier but here the problem is being rephrased in a more developed form - that of the interplay between literal and depicted shape. Like certain other artists using shaped stretchers, David Shepherd is concerned with increasing the surface tension through the abutment of physically tangible flat surfaces and illusionistically warped areas, setting setting up a play between the actual shape of the canvas support and the shapes depicted on the canvas. The heavy supporting base which he uses, enables him to identify the painting’s literal edge, permitting it to extend inwards as a tangible surface, a solid enclosing frame and not, as in figure-ground paintings, as an enveloping background space,. Further, as the eye proceeds from the outside inward, it is brought into conjunction with the illusionistic play of the projected colour planes,that tilt and warp the surface flatness. Posing itself in these terms we are forced to reconcile the painting’s unstable, fluctuating centre, with the static presence of the surrounding plane, anchored as it is to the framing perimeter.
In much colour abstraction today, methods of acrylic staining are used where the pigment is soaked into the raw cotton duck so that the colour is established as an inseparable element in the palpable threaded surface of the canvas. In contrast David Shepherd sets his colour units down as a series of adhesive layers, stretched onto the under surface of the painting. It is as if these colour segments were stuck down , elastically taught, like a resilient skin, pointing up areas of rigidity across the painting’s surface. There are no exposed areas of unpainted canvas onto which the optical pressures of adjacent colour fields can spill over. Instead, Shepherd’s colours are mutually intensified, through their enforced interaction, within the format of his centred block.
Geoff Sutton 
