"500 Seconds" Painting

John Moores Painting Prize and Royal Academy exhibitor David O'M has been placing his work with international collectors since 2008. His paintings have also featured across prestigious platforms including Cork Street, ING Discerning Eye, Lynn Painter-Stainers at the Mall Galleries, and Sky Arts.

Bridging the infinite and the intimate, these paintings imbue rigorous space science with a profound, Zen-like stillness. A binding celestial* thread runs through the entire body of work, which is predominantly rendered in deep, velvety blacks to immerse the viewer in the vast, silent voids of the cosmos. Within this dark expanse, the imagery scales from the monumental architecture of mountain-top observatories ogling upward into infinity, to the burning, isolated light of the sun and moon. As a grounding contrast to these deep-space vistas, a distinct subset of the work focuses on shifting atmospheric conditions—capturing clouds as a delicate, fleeting membrane separating Earth from that infinite darkness. It is a striking visual inquiry into scale, shadow, and humanity’s relentless gaze into the abyss.

Artist Statement
"Essentially, I am drawn to the power of vastness and the context of the wider picture—the compelling journey from that which is constricted within to the cusp of the infinite. An existential dialectic may be detected from ruminations on the metaphysical aspects of time and space. I seek to instill a pure sense of wonder in my work, intended to guide the viewer to tap into the sublime, celebrating the mental faculty that enables us to be transported by art. I am particularly fond of a David Lynch quote postulating that the restrictions of the filmmaking process do not apply to the field of painting, and that indeed, 'painting is infinite.' The ultimately leveling template of the void is inherent at the core of everything I make."


*Celestial refers to anything positioned in or relating to the sky, or the outer universe beyond Earth's atmosphere. It is formally derived from the Latin caelestis and can also mean heavenly, divine, or spiritually otherworldly.


David OM originates from the Fylde coast of Lancashire, attained his BA (Hons) Fine Art in the Northeast of England, before moving to London where he remained for over two decades; he is now based a 1hr train journey - north of Kings Cross