}
David Blackwood: A Survey
By Robert Amos
Winchester Gallery,
2260 Oak Bay Avenue (595-2777)
until January 31, 2004
“Each thing that’s done in the present trails the glory of all that’s
been created before... He approaches his art as if it were the ocean -
endless, deep and infinitely variable. It is here that Blackwood has
set his nets, and his nets come up filled with light and stories.”
David Gough on David Blackwood
David Blackwood is an artist I admire. I spent an hour with the
mild-mannered, bespectacled artist and, though he is more than sixty
years old, he glows with a youthful enthusiasm. A natural-born
storyteller, Blackwood seems ever ready to launch out on a
conversational tangent.
As one of Canada’s most popular artists, Blackwood has found his
Newfoundland heritage to be an inexhaustible mine of inspiration. Born
in 1941 , he grew up in Wesleyville on the north east shore of The
Rock. He is heir to generations of seafaring lore - his father and
grandfather were captains of sailing ships, working the inshore
fisheries and making annual voyages to the sealing grounds off
Labrador. The tiny village in which he was raised was austere,
Methodist, and deeply veined with customs obscure - and now obsolete.
Blackwood left Wesleyville at the age of 17, and enrolled at Toronto’s
Ontario College of Art. His narrative style, based on patient
draughtsmanship, went against the grain of the prevailing art scene,
but his talent and the rich heritage with which it was informed were
recognized and encouraged.
In the years since, his prolific output of etched memories has honoured
the dark mysteries of Newfoundland’s ancient way of life. Long a
resident of Port Hope on Lake Ontario’s shores, Blackwood is constantly
in demand to show in galleries across the country, and the world. The
breadth of this show, and the care with which it was selected, bespeaks
his respect for Victoria and this gallery. He has brought his best.
With a crisp line bitten into copper plates, Blackwood etches his
island home in every detail - every fence picket, wharf piling, laundry
line and flag pole. He respectfully presents the characters and
costumes of people who were living legends to him. He imbues their
activities with a haunting sense of the dangers of a seafaring life and
the mysteries of life on this tiny cluster of homes on the ocean’s
shore. Sombre in tone and obsessively descriptive, there is much love
in this art - but nothing sentimental.
Blackwood also brought to Victoria some large oils of Ephraim
Kelloway’s door. During his childhood, the Kelloways lived beside the
Blackwoods.
“In our community of brightly painted white houses, “ he has written,
“the Kelloway ‘place’ was known for its greyness. The weathered grey
clapboard house... had not been painted in living memory. However, for
several summers in the mid-fifties, Ephraim Kelloway painted his shed
door - some say almost 50 times.”
Blackwood, in 1990, took up this door as a subject, creating a series
of life-sized paintings showing the door’s colourful evolution. They
are at once pungently realistic and strikingly abstract.
The International Signal Flags series is another major part of this
show, a subject presented in pencil sketches, coloured monoprints and
painted canvases.
Master Mariner, 1994, etching, 50 x 40 cm
(portrait of his father, Captain Edward Blackwood)
for more pictures see
www.winchestergalleriesltd.com
The series was inspired by Blackwood’s father, Captain Edward Bishop
Blackwood. “When I was ten years old,” the artist told me, “my father
created a set of flags in the form of playing cards. He used the inside
of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes boxes, cut them up and drew a flag on each.
They were coloured with wax crayons. Newfoundland was becoming part of
Canada and all the sea captains were going to have to write exams to
obtain their master’s ‘ticket’.
“Everybody was cursing that damn...” - here, the artist’s voice trailed
off. Some of masters were sealers who had navigated the ice-filled and
fog-bound waters of the Labrador Sea. But they couldn’t read or write
and they couldn’t qualify. “They might have to go to sea as first
mate,” he concluded with a short shake of his head.
Captain Blackwood made signal flag cards to test himself, and young
David was included. “It was hinted that I should learn the code, to be
ready when the time came.” That time is past now, along with the cod
fishery, the sailing ships and the signal flags. Nevertheless, the
young artist learned his lesson.
Knowing what we do of Blackwood’s more detailed work, the simplicity of
these designs speaks volumes. The paintings represent the actual flag
design; they act as formal colour field paintings; and they speak to us
of vast, open seascapes. Every horizontal line becomes the ocean’s
horizon; the space above is a shifting sky which mariners ceaselessly
scan for clues of coming weather. While the centre of each painting is
certainly a flag, the margins are rich with subtle clues of wind and
water. The whole is bathed in an unearthly light which says
“Newfoundland”.
___________________________________________
Copyright © 2002 Robert Amos
Robert Amos is an artist and art writer who lives in Victoria, B. C.. He can
be contacted by
e-mail
and you can view his paintings at
www.robertamos.com