home

   new work

   available

   archives

   biography

   press

   catalogues new


   kindertotentanz

   contact

Vancouver painter David Haughton takes his brushes and palette across continents to capture the nuances of geography and nature. His aesthetic terrain has included scenes from Greece, Iltaly and France. But for the past four years, Haughton has increasingly focused on the untamed landscapes of inlets and mountains in beautiful British Columbia, his home. The paintings in this exhibit represent the third year of his theme of mountains, ships and sea.

The motivation behind this series is most reminiscent of Cezanne's approach to the visual changes on locale that are triggered by light and weather. Like Cezanne, Haughton doesn't see one mountain: he sees many mountains in one.

Not only does the mountain itself seem to change, but, again like Cezanne, Haughton steals fragments of motifs he perceives in nature and plays with them throughout several designs. A careful viewer can glimpse motifs that recur between paintings, such as the side of a ship's hull picked up again in a different scale; or a slip of a mountain's edge in one painting has been enlarged in another one; or a bit of a bridge can be found in different perspectives in different paintings. The viewer of numerous works at once can derive much visual pleasure from an analytical and aesthetic survey of these subtly repeated motifs.Haughton has an extensive background in watercolor painting, sketching and pen-and-ink work. His attention to the details of contour line and texture, and his studied attendance to their creative rigors, have paid off well as he has ventured into painting with acrylics for this work.

Haughton is always searching for and locating imagery in the city around him. He admits to frequently taking photos even while driving when his eye is caught by some natural effect, especially of lighting. The natural setting of Vancouver with its many inlets and sounds, its coastal mountain backdrop and its varying weather and lighting conditions have made the area a perfect study for his talents.

He is extremely visually attentive to composition. Like Cezanne, he sees the lines of design underlying every landscape. These he evokes carefully, like the gestures of a magician. The underlying compositions give his paintings both a fine, strong structure and a delicious lace-work of contour edges. Exquisitely demonstrating this approach, they tease the viewer's eye between color field and contour.

In this body of work, Haughton presents a number of huge triptychs of exactly the same scene: a view across the ocean inlet from Spanish Banks in Vancouver to the mountains of North Vancouver. They were originally conceived and completed for a commission. These works are a fascinating study of the artist's own response to notions of permanence in nature. Haughton does not appear to form a sense of "constancy" as defined by Piaget in his mind when he draw and paints a scene. His subjects don't portray a sense of objective mental permanence that remains changeless, unaffected by conditions of light and viewpoint. In each triptych, the same scene has undergone completely different interpretations, from a warm and glowing treatment that conjures late summer to a cooler, wilder reading of the sea, mountains and sky.

There is less attention to splitting one view into three, particularly as he did in earlier watercolors. There is more interest in combining three views of the same subject. In this regard, Haughton takes a Cubist approach to perspective more in keeping with his subjective responses to composition and color. For example, triptychs combine a panoramic view, a fragment with increased visual focus, and a slim vertical strip that seems to capture an "essence" of his subject. This approach is more typical of how the human eye visual system works. The eye attends in quick saccades of fixation and the brain provides the sense of cohesion between the split-second glimpses.

As studio productions, these paintings are fascinating in that he actually conceives them as a whole. Haughton begins with the ground for the entire painting, tapes off sections, then works from sketches to develop each section. The confidence he acquired from years of watercolor and pen and ink drawing allows him to simply jump in with both feet and begin the work as a whole.

His paintings in this show have changed subtly in other ways. The color seems a little crisper, more contemporary, with a bit of attitude here and there. Acrylics are a demanding medium that, with their quick-drying properties, leave little time to re-work surfaces. In response, Haughton has mastered the art of layering glazes to build up glowing tiers of color. The stunning effects of his scumbling techniques can best be seen in the luminous skies and the sparking color fields of topography. Haughton is developing significant skills as a colorist.

Haughton also appears to be experimenting with new versions of "framing" a scene. As a whole, these paintings sem less formally contrived, less "designed" in a traditional sense of painting, although he is still drawn to the use of trees or other framing devices in the foreground. Many of the paintings are larger in scale. The quality of technique is more even: they look and feel more confident, and in greater numbers.

But above all, beyond the paint and process, there is great passion and a sense of kinship with his subject matter. As a man most content and excited to be outdoors in nature, Haughton has an affinity with the fluctuating cold and heat of the West Coast atmosphere. He feels the brilliant light scuttling across surfaces, the sparkling wet shades of deep forest greens, the dark cold waves of sea and tide. These features come alive on canvas with little taming. The viewer can sense the artist's presence on site in all his enthusiasm, and this may be the most memorable aspect of his work.

Mia Johnson, Vancouver 2002