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Fine Art alumnus completes season-long partnership with the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) and Vertu Motors.
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David started at Coventry University when he was 19-years-old, only leaving home in Romania just two days before, but he soon overcame initial struggles with the language, the culture and the course.
Finding myself surrounded by talented creatives helped me find my identity as an artist.
The amazing arts courses, facilities and workshops at Coventry, sealed the deal for me and I’ve not looked back.
June 2022 saw David complete a partnership with the PFA and Vertu Motors, creating five portraits each month for the 2021-22 season. Working in monochromatic acrylic, David aims to capture the intense dynamics of professional athletes in motion that first fired his imagination during his course.
I’ve experimented with many different mediums before settling on acrylic. It gives me the texture I need to create and maintain the sense of movement in my subjects.
David’s process starts with a photo, a snapshot in time where the athlete is frozen into a beautiful and dynamic shape. David then breaks down that snapshot into a series of simple, abstract gestures that form the bones of the image, as the movement flows and its synergy becomes better understood, only then does David start painting and bringing that energy to the canvas.
David now believes that there is more specialist business and marketing advice available to artists today, as well as ready access to platforms to help showcase their work.
The NFT drop was way more technical than I imagined but by partnering with Geniace, I was able to focus on the creative while they brought the tech.
The game-changer with an NFT drop is the ownership and traceability provided by the blockchain, which means artists get a percentage of each re-sale of their art forever.
The integration of technologies such as motion capture and AI, with traditional skills and techniques such as painting and sculpture, lies at the heart of the new Faculty of Arts and Humanities building, due to open in early 2023. David admits to being quite envious of the students being able to take advantage of this multi-million-pound facility.
If I had my time again, I’d be making the most of the resources, tools and equipment available - they can be difficult and costly to get hold of once you graduate. I’d encourage new artists to experiment and take time to let their individual styles grow.
While you have the time and opportunity to experiment, be brave and open-minded and let your creative juices flow!
With one NFT drop under his belt and the current partnership with the PFA coming to an end, David is excited about the future.
I’m working towards a series of more holistic interviews with elite athletes, where the relationship between artist and subject is the story behind the work, and central to the finished piece.
And of course, I plan to continue venturing further into the NFT world with more art drops!
You can follow David’s work:
https://davidromanart.com/
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