David Thistlethwaite Biography 2008
David Thistlethwaite was born in 1950 in Hampstead, London. He learnt drawing from his mother, who studied at the Slade under the famous drawing teachers Tonks and Shwabe, and won an Art Exhibition to Lancing College. (His mother’s uncle, Sir Hugh Lane, founded the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin and was among the first British collectors of Impressionist art, and David wrote his BA thesis on Lane’s taste). At Cambridge he read History then changed to Art History where he gained a First. His first work was at Agnew’s, the Bond St dealers, where he handled works by Turner and Constable among others, and this experience has influenced all his subsequent work. At Agnew’s, David began writing about art (lecturing on Roger Fry at Cambridge) and decided to return to pursue research there. After 5 years of research, and most of his conclusions still in his head, he married Alison and gradually began practical painting. Research however distilled and transformed itself into a book (1998) ‘The art of God’. Art training was received 1995-6 at City and Guilds School of Art London, and in Italy under the Russian painter, Daud Akhriev. Work has been in the London Russell Gallery and various Cotswold Galleries as well as two successful exhibitions in David and Ali’s own gallery, The Lodge Studio.
Statement ‘I love looking at paintings, and have looked at a great many of them! The best of them make you feel you could do something yourself. They also give a longing to put something of good back into the world. I think art can be a great blessing; it can increase the sense of being alive, and can show what there is to notice and love in life. I feel art is from God, something we need to aid and encourage’.