ST. JOHN’S, NL –
Canadian artist David Blackwood, known for his haunting and powerful etchings of Newfoundland harbor life, died Saturday in Port Hope, Ontario, at the age of 80.
His death is an incalculable loss, both for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and for the Canadian art world, Mireille Eagan, curator of the Rooms provincial art gallery in St. John’s, said Monday.
“David Blackwood is one of Canada’s most beloved artists, but for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, he is one of its best storytellers,” Eagan said in an interview. “A good story told is one that is universal. And that’s what he did.”
Blackwood was born in 1941 in the Newfoundland town of Wesleyville, on the shore of Bonavista Bay. Although he stayed in Ontario after graduating from the Ontario College of Art in 1963, much of his art documented the harsh seafaring life he remembered from his hometown.
He kept a studio in Wesleyville until a few years before his death, Emma Butler, who represented him for about 35 years through her gallery in St. John’s, said in an interview Monday.
Blackwood was awarded the Order of Canada in 1993 and the Order of Ontario in 2003. He also received honorary degrees from the University of Calgary and the Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, both in 1992. He is noted among great Newfoundland and Labrador artists such as Gerald Squires Mary Pratt and Christopher Pratt, who died June 5.
Blackwood was a master of gravure engraving, a technique in which images are engraved on copper or zinc plates. Ink is then poured over the plate to fill in the gaps, after which paper is pressed onto the metal to pick up the ink and image.
Some of Blackwood’s best-known prints show men using ropes to transport houses over land and sea, documenting the government-run resettlement programs that sprung up in the province in the 1950s. Others show dark-clad fishermen huddled together in wooden boats, coming and going from land.
In one image, called “Fire Down on the Labrador,” a small boat pulls away from a burning two-masted ship, the inky red flames blown sideways by the wind into the frigid black sky. Beneath the scene lurks an enormous whale, its body contorted by the long underwater root of an approaching iceberg. The baleen fibers of the whale’s mouth appear almost sinister, like thousands of needle-thin teeth exposed by the animal’s wide grin.
In another print, “The Great Peace of Brian and Martin Winsor,” two hunters are shown stumbling through the depths of the sea, caught in the wake of another great whale and caught in the crook of its tail. Their arms are crossed over their bellies as their weapons float weightless at their sides.
“I think part of David’s work is about survival,” Butler said. “It’s about succeeding, that’s the word he used, about hardship. Because Newfoundland is still here.”
There is a darkness to much of Blackwood’s work – the Globe and Mail called him “Newfoundland’s gothic master” – but there is also a sense of wonder: the lurking whales, the towering icebergs, the radiant light guiding people. while they fish, build and gather.
“His work is disturbing,” Eagan said. “He didn’t shy away from difficult topics, but he also found beauty in those very stories: the stories of loss, the cod moratorium and resettlement.”
“No one made art like him,” he added.
All the characters in his pieces — “Captain Solomon White,” “Patron Bax Ford’s House in Wesleyville,” “Ephraim Kelloway’s Door” — were real people from Blackwood’s family or from his childhood in Wesleyville, Butler said. He showed them in real situations, just as he remembered them.
“So much of our history is in our body of work,” he said.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on July 4, 2022.