Deja Vue, Artist Statement 2000




home new work available archives biography press giclée prints catalogues inventory by size newsletter archive contact kindertotentanz	DEJA VUE Artist Statement 2000 The time had come to travel again: to pack up bicycle, watercolour paper, brushes and camping gear into a large bundle and to attempt to charm my way around airline overweight-baggage penalties. My internal art-clock told me that I should now be sitting in dew-drenched fields in the half-light before dawn, drinking cold Nescafe and feeding upon dry bread, listening to the wind rustling in the grapevines. There I should be waiting for the sunlight to strike the stones of the castle walls and spark my morning’s painting with its ochre reverberations. It was not to be. Changes in my life made leaving Vancouver impossible for the moment. Putzing about my studio while wrestling with the dilemma, I came across a large collection of pencil drawings I had done on several painting trips in the 1980s. Bold simple drawings, often just a few lines, they were drawn on a succession of watercolour paper pads during the time I was teaching myself watercolour. I had hoped that they would serve as a basis for watercolour paintings I could complete later, back in the studio where I had more courage and control of the medium. But my watercolour style developed in a way that worked best with no pre-sketch. And the pencil lines on watercolour paper, however simple I tried to make them, still betrayed the influence of the previous fifteen years of pen and ink drawings. they were strong lines, outlining strong forms. Attempts to blend with watercolour never worked. But I didn’t discard these drawings, figuring that they would someday serve as fodder for a new set of works. And so it proved, this spring, the drawings, so wrong as a basis for watercolour, were perfect as a catalyst for acrylics. These paintings, then, are a series of re-discovered inspiration: twigged by lines recorded 12 to 20 years ago on journeys to Italy, France, Greece, Switzerland and Spain. Of course I tend to forget the creature discomforts of such journeys, like the damp grass and occasional thorn under my seat as I sketched and the cold awakening from stony-sleep-on-hillside above my next morning’s planned subject. Such thoughts are crowded out as I paint -- my soul is filled with the light and enthusiasm of those days in Europe. David Haughton, Vancouver 2000 Return to Press






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