Dear Friends,
Many of you will find my new work a surprising departure from earlier scenes of the West Coast. I have started three suites of paintings: Mug Shots, Evil in Disguise and Gangsters. These works are the extension of my ongoing ‘conversation with God’ into the realm of art – catapulting dialectic into lines and brushstrokes.
My father was an Episcopalian minister, as was his grandfather. Unlike my great-grandfather, who led a large Main Line Pennsylvania church for many years, my father left active ministry early, disillusioned with the hypocrisy of the church, and the discord he felt preaching justice in prisons, or God’s mercy to the family of a victim of polio. I inherited my father’s skeptical questioning, if not his ultimate faith.
From an early age I have had a silent, ongoing ‘internal discussion’ with the Judeo-Christian God of my fathers. I find myself asking: ‘O God, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent as you are … why allow suffering by innocents? From this questioning, and my pediatric training, sprang the Kindertotentanz series of 1986 – 2007. During the past decade, I have been asking: “why have you created evil?“ and “why does evil so often triumph?” These questions have prompted ongoing explorations of the Faces of Evil.
Thomas Aquinas concluded that the existence of evil in the world was the greatest obstacle to Christian faith and doctrine. Certainly, it eroded my belief, but also pushed me to begin an exploration in paint. Please join me for the opening reception on May 13, 5-8 pm or come by and visit one day during the show.
Mug Shot XXV, Crusader
3352 Dunbar Street, Vancouver, BC
May 11–24, 2017, 12-5 pm daily
Open reception Saturday May 13, 5–8 pm
“We love mug shots. The newspapers show us the faces of “bad guys”: serial killers and wife-beaters, terrorists and animal abusers, pederast priests and gang-bangers, rapacious corporate scam-artists and nasty racist small-town sheriffs. We find it endlessly absorbing, searching in the facial bone structure, or the skin color, or the facial hair for a pattern we can recognize as dangerous, trying to discover some clue of expression that would identify and warn of evil within.”
View images from The Face of Evil
OTHER NEWS
I am deep into work on the new series of landscape paintings titled “40 Views of Mount Baker”. These paintings capture views of Mount Baker from forty different locations and are inspired by the Japanese artist Hokusai, my artistic ‘hero’. They will be shown in September.
40 Views of Mount Baker: In Homage to Hokusai
Visual Space Gallery
3352 Dunbar Street, Vancouver, BC
September 14 – 27, 2017; Noon-5 pm daily
Reception: Saturday September 16, 5 – 8 pm
Vernissage (preview): Wednesday September 13, 4-7 pm
Yours, David