David Hall, 2019 (photo credit: Sarah Stevenson)
BIOGRAPHY
David Hall was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1959. He is a painter and a Fine Arts professor at Dawson College in Montreal, Qc. Hall holds a B.F.A from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design and an M.F.A. from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Over more than thirty years Hall’s work has been shown in both solo and group exhibitions throughout Canada and abroad. Recent exhibitions are Forces of Nature, Galerie d’Art d’Outremont, Outremont, Quebec, After Landscape, Galerie Art Mûr, Montréal, Global Warning: Scenes from a Planet Under Pressure, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Reflects IV at Maison De La Culture Marie-Uguay, Montreal, Qc. and Nature of Conflict at the Warren G. Flowers Gallery, Montreal, Qc.
His work is represented in the collections of the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, La collection Prêt d’oeuvres d’art du Musée du Québec, Québec, Banque d’oeuvres d’art, Conseil des arts du Canada, Ottawa, On. Lotto – Québec, Montreal and the Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, B.C. His work is also in several private and corporate collections.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
My compositions deal with landscape transformation driven by human activity and nature. The subjects of these paintings range from deserted environments to naval vessels at risk on the seas. These landscapes and seascapes are represented in a state of abandonment or near-obsolescence. In these painted compositions recent human activity has ceased or ground to a near halt only to be taken over by entropy. My on-going motif is the delicate balance that exists on our planet. This balance can easily be threatened and even destroyed by both natural phenomena, (weather, seismic activity) and by human activity (warfare, heavy industry). This condition is rendered by the use of atmospheric light and aerial perspective viewpoints.
Many of the compositions come from documentary war photographs, such as the aftermath of various bombing campaigns or sieges that have marked recent human history. Drawing on this factual information, I choose certain aspects in the images and combine them to create a new subjective version of the story.
Although historical documents of military campaigns and exploratory trips have served as a useful starting point for these images, the compositions are, in fact, invented. Each can be seen as a unique perspective within a larger narrative sequence that is never identified.
The scenes depicted may seem both exotic and familiar at the same time due in part to their universal subjects and to an atmosphere of tranquility, all that remains of past events.