Artwork by David Lloyd Blackwood,  Iceberg

David Blackwood
Iceberg

ink drawing
signed and dated 2002 lower right
9.5 x 14 ins ( 24.1 x 35.6 cms ) ( sheet )

Auction Estimate: $1,500.00$1,200.00 - $1,500.00

Price Realized $2,640.00
Sale date: September 24th 2015

Provenance:
Abbozzo Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto
Literature:
Memorial University Art Gallery, “David Blackwood: Prints 1962-1984,” St. John's, 1985, pages 1-2
Born in 1941 in Wesleyville, Bonavista Bay on Newfoundland's east coast. “David Blackwood's family was a part of [the] seafaring tradition with his great-grandfather Captain Ned Bishop, his grandfather Captain Albert Blackwood of the S.S. Imogene and his father Edward, a skipper in the cod fishery.” Naturally, Blackwood was drawn to the romantic yet treacherous sea that held so much control over his family and community.

While attending OCA in the early 1960s, Blackwood had a host of important Canadian artists as mentors. It was Jock Macdonald, however, who encouraged him to draw from his roots, and Rowley Murphy, who worked alongside the young artist in promoting maritime themes. The persevering young Blackwood is now heralded as “creating a [visual] Newfoundland mythology around a way of life, a community spirit, and an heroic engagement with Nature.”

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David Lloyd Blackwood
(1941 - 2022) OSA, RCA, Order of Canada

Born in Wesleyville, Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland, one of the major sealing towns of that province, he is a descendant of a long line of master mariners. Blackwood was awarded a Government of Newfoundland Centennial scholarship to study at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto under Carl Schaefer, John Alfsen, H.W.G. MacDonald and Frederick Hagan. He went on to become Art Master at Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario. In 1969, Blackwood became the first artist-in-residence at Erindale College, University of Toronto, Mississauga.

David Blackwood uses his background on the East coast of Canada to create grande visual narratives reflecting both the landscape and culture of the province with an emphasis on combining the history, legends, and myths of settlement and developing culture of Newfoundland. He is best-known for his colour etchings with aquatint. His work was used to provide illustrations for Farley Mowat’s “Wake of the Great Sealers”, a collection of stories about the heroic Newfoundlanders who braved the icy seas of the treacherous North Atlantic in search of seals. Driven by hard times at home it was the only hope many of the men had of making money to feed their families. Men perished when their ships went down during wintry gales. Blackwood, a native of a sealing town himself, and a descendent of fishing skippers and sealing captains, provides Mowat’s stirring text with equally stirring and poetic figurative drawings and prints.

Blackwood was awarded the Order of Canada in 1993 in recognition of his work contributing to and preserving the cultural life and heritage of Canada through his artwork. At the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Blackwood Research Centre within the Morin Gelber Print and Drawing Centre was created after a major acquisition of the artists works in 2000. The museum also elected Blackwood as its honourary Chairman in 2003, the first practicing artist to hold this position. In the same year, he was awarded the Order of Ontario.

As one of Canada's most celebrated print-makers, David Blackwood's works are part of significant Canadian and international private and corporate collections including The Royal Collection, Windsor Castle, the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada.

Sources: "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume I: A-F", compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1977