Mary Pratt, after receiving her Fine Art’s degree at Mount Allison University (under the direction of Alex Colville-think Horse and Train & -think Magic Realism)and after her children were of school age, Mary West-Pratt began realistic painting in her husband’s hometown, in their hometown kitchen of Salmonier, Nfld. The use of light was a major tool in expressing the sensual qualities of her everyday viewings.
FISH ON FOIL and JARS OF RED CURRENT JELLY
These objects became the subjects of sheer wonder.(frozen moments in time).
David Blackwood, born in 1941, captures the imagination of life/death / and the vastness of forever with his epic visual paintings/print-making of THE SEA AND THE EFFECTS OF THE SEA.
David Blackwood came from a long lineage of competitive skippers. His grandfather was one of 4 brothers who regularly went up to Labrador to load up on the catch; his father was the captain of a schooner, apart of an out port community of sealers and fisherman(Wesleyville, Bonavista Bay).
David was well schooled in the meaning of the sea, the great tragedies like the disaster of the ss Newfoundlanders Sealing expedition of 1914. His passion must have just lingered, because all this STUFF came out with time. He worked off his own boat with lobster traps at the age of 15 years and worked in the winter months in a studio/an old converted shed, selling a prolific out-pouring of paintings in the summer season. David Blackwood registered at the Ontario College of Art in 1959 to do further study. He took this profound legacy of Newfoundland Stories with him.
Just one of many of his acknowledgements is from the ORDER OF CANADA in 1993 and the ORDER OF ONTARIO (I did not know that there was one) in 2002.
The paintings, be them from formative artists like the ones I have just assembled, are so so many and so many artists have so many stories to tell….yet the TIMES truly were different when young David Blackwood was around. It is only for us, and the dearly departed,that he has rendered these works…a testament to times that dealt with the profound dynamics of struggle for survival: man versus the elements.
Susan
2012thislandisyourlandseatosea 