DAVID BLACKWOOD "GULL ROCK BREAKING" 2001
$2,500.00
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Description:
- Edition: 46/75
- Etchin & Aquatint
- Date: 2001
- Signed lower right
- Sheet: 13 x 18 inches (33 x 45.7 cm)
- Framed: 24 x 28 inches (61 x 71.1 cm)
- Condition: Excellent
- Framed under glass
The Artist: David Blackwood (Canadian, 1941-2022)
David Lloyd Blackwood (1941–2022) was one of Canada’s most prominent and celebrated master printmakers and visual storytellers. Born in the outport community of Wesleyville, Newfoundland, his family’s long seafaring history and his childhood memories heavily informed his epic intaglio and aquatint prints. Often dubbed "Newfoundland's gothic master," Blackwood created haunting, powerful imagery that deeply chronicled the history, legends, and perilous seafaring life of Atlantic Canada. His instantly recognizable style features a stark, dramatic blue-black color palette used to explore recurring themes such as humanity's struggle with nature, the realities of the sealing industry, tragic shipwrecks, and local outport folklore like the iconic "mummering" traditions.
Recognized as an artistic prodigy early on, Blackwood graduated from OCAD University and had his work purchased by the National Galllery of Canada when he was just 23 years old. Over his prolific career, he exhibited his work in more than 90 solo shows internationally and was the subject of the 1974 Academy Award-nominated documentary, BLACKWOOD, produced by the National Film Board. In recognition of his vast contributions to Canadian art, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario. Today, his masterworks are preserved in premier global institutions, including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, which houses his primary archives.
While Gull Rock Breaking is not an official, named part of a rigid "Bragg's Island" series, it is thematically and compositionally intertwined with David Blackwood's Bragg's Island works. Rather than releasing strictly bound portfolios, Blackwood’s body of work operates like a fluid narrative web, grouping open-ended visual themes over decades. Gull Rock Breaking captures the exact, violent North Atlantic ocean dynamics and jagged coastal rock formations of Bonavista Bay that physically isolated the outport community of Bragg's Island. Because it perfectly sets the geographic and atmospheric stage for the family history, galleries and collectors frequently exhibit and curate this piece alongside central Bragg's Island prints like Granda Glover's Place on Bragg's Island. Ultimately, the churning waters and looming sky in Gull Rock Breaking provide the environmental context for the community's exile, representing the untamable coastal forces Blackwood's family lived beside before their forced resettlement to the mainland.
The Bragg's Island Collection is one of David Blackwood’s most deeply personal series, heavily inspired by his maternal ancestry and the traumatic historical reality of Newfoundland’s government-enforced resettlement program. Bragg's Island was a small, isolated outport community where Blackwood’s grandparents lived until the mid-1950s when the population was moved to the mainland. Through this collection, Blackwood blends familial memories, haunting coastal landscapes, and themes of displacement.
The Story: From a private collector in Toronto.
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