Visions of Wesleyville : David Blackwood

The works of Canadian Master Printmaker David Blackwood once again return to the walls of Abbozzo Gallery for the 11th time. For decades, David Blackwood has captured and recreated the mythologies of the rugged and unforgiving East Coast of Newfoundland. Blackwood left Wesleyville to study art at what was then the Ontario College of Art (now OCADU) in 1959, but his work produced since then is almost entirely rooted in the period of his childhood in Wesleyville, Newfoundland. The oeuvre of David Blackwood depicts the miscellany of characters, trials, traumas, traditions, and landscapes just inland and on the Labrador Sea, with these subjects all personal to him, and often beautifully, hauntingly, intersecting with each other in his artwork.

David Blackwood’s long, storied, and uniquely Canadian career has garnered him much acclaim, belonging to the both private and public collections across the globe. This includes having major solo retrospective exhibitions at both provincial galleries the Art Gallery of Ontario and Newfoundland’s The Rooms, as well as being in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, the Uffizi Gallery (Florence, Italy) and the collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (The Royal Collection, Windsor Castle). David Blackwood has been made a member of the Order of Canada and Ontario.