Statement
Dave Allen taught visual arts in local schools and the University for around 35 years, where he specialised in arts education, history and inter-disciplinary work. Since retiring from full-time teaching, he has devoted more time to painting, in which he specialised as a student in the early 1970s.
Dave has also been an active musician for the past 50 years and his music and artwork reveal their roots in the 1960s – the titles of the paintings are often taken from songs, and the work is mostly hard-edged abstraction, and mixed-media, although in later years the images also hint at a lifetime spent within walking distance of Southsea seafront, Point, Old Portsmouth and the Camber. They are nonetheless ‘paintings’ rather than ‘paintings of or about (something)’.