Maya Frodeman Gallery is pleased to present Ships in the Forest, a solo exhibition with artist David Abbott, on view at the gallery's downtown location from June 11th through July 26th, 2026. An artist reception will be held Thursday, June 11th from 5 to 8pm. Abbott will be in attendance. All are welcome to attend.
The exhibition brings together a body of work shaped by sustained attention to the contemporary landscape — its beauty, its ambivalence, and its quiet instability. Created following the artist’s receipt of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, the exhibition marks a significant development in Abbott’s practice, introducing a new body of large-scale works. The exhibition takes its title from a centuries-old folk song, reflecting Abbott’s longstanding interest in folk music as a carrier of collective memory and human experience. Inspired in part by a walk along The Ridgeway — one of Britain’s oldest pathways — the paintings emerge from the artist’s confrontation with a rapidly changing landscape shaped by industrial development, expanding infrastructure, and visible environmental pressure.
David Abbott was born in 1981 and grew up in Hertfordshire, UK, before moving to Virginia as a teenager, where he attended high school and university. He received his BA in Fine Art from James Madison University in 2004. He then returned to the UK and received his MA in Multidisciplinary Printmaking at the University of the West of England in 2007. Abbott worked as a graphic designer until 2021 when he took up painting full-time. He has shown widely in the UK, Europe, and North America. Today, Abbott lives and works in Bristol, UK.
