David Remfry

Born in 1942 in Worthing, David Remfry studied at Hull College of Art. His first solo show in London in 1973 has since been followed by more than 50 international solo exhibitions. He is well known both for his large-scale watercolors of dancers, and for his drawings and watercolors of his neighbors and friends at the Hotel Chelsea in New York, where he lived from 1995 to 2016.
Remfry’s skill in capturing dancers in movement in spontaneous watercolor is shown to particularly good effect in these pocket-sized sketches of tango aficionados. Characteristically, he shows us neither their heads nor their feet, instead concentrating entirely on their midriffs in this charming celebration of the most seductive and passionate of dances.

New York–based British painter David Remfry (born 1942) has long been fascinated by the relationships that develop between dogs and their owners. In this charming volume, his delicate portraits in watercolor and gouache reveal the mutual understanding and sympathy of these partnerships. Many of the portraits are accompanied by sketches from the artist’s numerous notebooks alongside brief accounts by Remfry of how dog and owner came to find each other. Some of Remfry’s lively watercolors and sketches illustrate celebrities and popular figures such as Ethan Hawke (and Nina), Susan Sarandon (and Penny and Rigby), Alan Cumming (and Honey) and Agnes Gund (and Tina, Giotto and Bronzino); other sitters were Remfry’s fellow residents at the iconic bohemian outpost, the Chelsea Hotel.

Over his long career, David Remfry (born 1942) has achieved a mastery of watercolor that few have matched. Unusually for the medium, he works on a large scale and often focuses on people, exploring the dance hall and the nightclub in images that are at once beautiful, intimate and edgy.
This book is the first full-length monograph devoted to Remfry’s watercolors. Its author, James Russell—well known for his writing on 20th-century British artists—traces the evolution of a remarkable talent, looking at the most significant works and placing Remfry in the context of both the British watercolor tradition and international contemporary painting.
Having spent 20 years living and working at the legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York, Remfry has a following on both sides of the Atlantic. New Yorkers—often in party mode—feature in many of his paintings, and his recollections of people and places add color to the text.