With all the heat lately, I’ve been seeking at least an imagined respite by looking at the work of Canadian printmaker David Blackwood, whose work I highlighted here a couple of years back. Set in the Canadian North Atlantic provinces of Labrador and Newfoundland, Blackwood weaves a black and white (sometimes with a bit of color) tapestry that is filled with the myth and mysticism of people who somehow survive in a cold and harsh landscape. If you know of the book or movie The Shipping News from Annie Proulx, you’ll be somewhat familiar with some of the tales that shaped Blackwood’s world.
I am always engrossed by both the sheer beauty of his images as well as this world he seeks to both document and create. The stories have their own narrative but there is a quality to them that seems beyond the local flavor of it, as though they are telling some primal tales that are part of our collective memory, pieces of a whole that we don’t even realize we are part of or that even exists. Maybe the stark desolation of this world makes this struggle for survival seem more evident, more contrasting. Whatever the case, I find them beautiful to see and stimulating to the mind. And they never look like 100 degrees in the shade.
Redtree Times 
I didn’t know The Shipping News and hadn’t really paid much attention to Annie Proulx, but found some wonderful interviews, including one with The Atlantic that’s just splendid.
I love this quotation – “Spend some time living before you start writing” – and intend to read her short story “Bedrock” as soon as I can lay hands on it. I have a sense it will be helpful in moving past (or through, or beyond) Mom’s recent death. We’ll see.
Somehow I missed your earlier post on Blackwood. Just now his work seems entirely too stark, but I suspect in time that won’t be so. I’ve made a note to come back and look at it again.
I like that Proulx quote and have often thought the same thing about young artists who have a lot of talent in the craft aspect but have little to say because of their relative inexperience in living.
Yes, Blackwood’s work is certainly stark and based on his corner of the world, I don’t think it could be anything else. But sometimes stark can be beautiful with the extraneous stripped away leaving only the very basest elements upon which to focus.