David MacWilliam

Bio

David MacWilliam has been active in the Vancouver art community for three decades as an artist and educator.

His research focuses on current possibilities for contemporary abstract painting in relation to the history of essentialist modernism. Proceeding in a highly intuitive manner, his paintings rely on process, observation and reflection- thinking through painting. He continues to be concerned with themes of making and materiality; opticality and colour. He has an ongoing interest in the associative meanings of colour and its uses visually and conceptually. Drawing inspiration from a myriad of sources and using paints, dyes, inks, his new unstretched paintings are soaked, stained, painted, and dried in sunlight.

From 2004 to 2013 he was Dean of the Faculty of Visual Art and Material Practice. Recent exhibitions include The Geometry of Knowing, Audain Gallery, SFU (2015), Artspeak, Vancouver (2014), Winchester Galleries, Victoria (2013).

work

Folded and Draped

2014
Unfolding Inkblots

2012

I recently published Unfolding, a book which reproduces forty inkblots chosen from the many that I have made over the past fifteen years. The book includes texts by Winnipeg psychiatrist Dr. Jeanne Randolph and Canadian artist and art historian Robert Linsley. Here's a few of the images:
Drawings

2011

I have been working on a series of drawings which are based on some mesh drawings I made a couple of years ago. These drawings build off interlocking hexagonal and pentagonal shapes connected with mesh triangles. I see these drawings as studies for some new paintings I'm about to make. Here's a selection from eighteen or so that I feel are the most interesting.