Art Gallery of Newfoundland and
Labrador (AGNL)
Shaped by the Sea
Permanent Collections
If there was ever an artist shaped by his early childhood, David Blackwood is this artist. Born in 1941 in the community of Wesleyville, Bonavista Bay, Blackwood grew up in an outport populated with schooner and sealing captains, where education was highly valued and storytelling an art form. Listening to stories about the seal hunt and the lives of his neighbours in crowded kitchens during cold winter nights influenced the kind of art he would produce later in life.
|
|
Wesleyville Remembered 1968 Etching, A. P. 40.5 x 50.5 cm 
(47KB)
|
Blackwood opened his own art studio in 1956, where he painted during the winter months and sold his work to visitors during the summer. His artwork won several awards and gained him admission to the Ontario College of Art (OCA) in 1959. In 1962, he sold one of his first etchings, The Lost Party, to the National Gallery of Canada for its Permanent Collection.
After graduation, Blackwood remained in Ontario, teaching part-time while working on his art. It was during this time that he developed his famous Lost Party series of etchings that focused on the S.S. Newfoundland sealing disaster of 1914. Containing 50 etchings, it is one of the largest thematically linked series of prints in Canadian history.
|
|
Lost Party 1963 Etching, 4/10 50.3 x 70.7 cm
(36KB)
|
Since then, Blackwood has remained one of the country's foremost artists, winning numerous awards and receiving honorary doctorates from several universities, including Memorial University of Newfoundland. He was also extensively involved with the creation of an art gallery at Erindale College, an affiliate of the University of Toronto. As a sign of gratitude to Blackwood, it was eventually renamed the Blackwood Gallery.
In 1974, the National Film Board produced a documentary about him, simply titled: Blackwood. It won world-wide acclaim, gaining 10 international awards, and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1975. Blackwood was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1975 and to the Academia Italia in 1980. There have also been two books published containing his artwork: Wake of the Great Sealers, a book written by Farley Mowat that featured his etchings, and The Art of David Blackwood.
While his art continues to focus on Newfoundland, Blackwood has not lived in the province on a regular basis since leaving art school in the early 1960s. Aside from trips to his hometown of Wesleyville once or twice a year, Blackwood resides in the town of Port Hope, Ontario, just outside of Toronto. He has said in interviews that he believes living in the province would actually hinder his ability to illustrate the stories of the Newfoundland outports.
Blackwood is considered one of Canada's best printmakers. While known for his stark blue-black etchings, in recent years he has experimented with watercolour and oil tempera. Recent exhibitions of his work include Ephraim Kelloway's Door and Personal Reflections of Newfoundland's Cod Fishery. He has retired from teaching, but continues to work on a full-time basis as an artist.
