Three Feet From Shore
September 13, 2003 - October 19, 2003
Gallery 1: David McClyment, Three Feet From Shore
Gallery 11: Northern Ontario Art Association Juried Exhibition
Saturday, Sept.13
Opening Reception: 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.
NOAA awards: 2:00 p.m.
McClyment remarks: 3:00 p.m.
Sunday, Sept. 14
Artist Talk: 2:00 p.m.
David McClyment talks about his work and process
Gallery 1 David McClyment - Three Feet From Shore David McClyment
was trained in classical painting technique at the Ontario College of Art,
graduating with that school’s medal for Fine Arts. He has been exhibiting
professionally in the Toronto area for close to 25 years. McClyment has been
quite active in the artist – run movement and has been associated with a
number of collectives and commercial co-operatives. Through his involvement
with BVW, a Toronto based collective, McClyment’s work has toured Italy and
Germany a number of times in recent years, culminated in a solo exhibition in
Sicily in 2000. He has just completed a very successful exhibition at
Sixty-Four Steps Contemporary Art, a commercial gallery in the Queen West
district of Toronto. His paintings, which typically feature the use of
hand-cut stencils on wood, have been the focus of numerous, generous grants
from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts
Council.
"I think of my painting in terms of process:
repeated layers of colour and imagery. Gouged, sanded, and tattooed with
fleeting marks, the surviving surfaces appear much like bruised flesh. Working
with a belt sander as much as a paint brush, I enjoy the struggle revealed by
the invisible stratification of layers. The resulting palimpsest of stenciled
imagery, ciphers and texture trace the ebb and flow on each work’s
development."
Process is obviously important to McClyment and so too, is the reference
to narrative format in his work. This work originated from discovering a
family heirloom – a Victorian age, natural sciences text book. The process
reveals the hidden imagery delving the collective sub-conscience; exploring
our fears, fascination and horror with the scientific developments of our
environment. Three Feet From Shore probes the blurring between what we think
we know for sure and what we don’t.
