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.