David MOREPrevious ArtistNext Artist

David More was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1947. His family moved to Canada the following year and eventually settled in Red Deer, Alberta. Growing up in a community inter-laced with forests and parks had a profound effect on shaping his vision later in life.

He began his art studies at the Alberta College of Art in Calgary in 1968 and graduated with awards and scholarships in 1972. His early career led him to work as an art history researcher, recording and interviewing famous artists of Alberta’s formative years. In 1973 he worked for the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary as a medical graphics artist. 1974 saw him receive a Canada Council grant to paint images of the Crowsnest Pass of Southern Alberta. The following year he was invited to instruct drawing, design and painting at the Alberta College of Art. He taught at ACA from 1975 till 1978.

In 1978 David and his wife-to-be, Yvette Brideau felt it was time to devote their entire energies to the creation of art, and so began a long period of development that continues to this day. David is known across Canada as a painter, illustrator/author and muralist. His images of Canada and Canadians range from Alberta and Vancouver Island in the West to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in the East. An exhibition of his work titled: FOREST – FADE TO SILENT, produced by Katherine Lipsett of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies dealt with the theme of acid rain in the forests of New Brunswick. This exhibition toured to 10 art museums across Canada from 1990 to 1993.

David More’s large painted works within the title GARDEN CEREMONY are created from images he has gathered through journeys to distant places since 1975. Included to date in this lifelong project are works based on visits to Brazil, France, England, Scotland, America, Trinidad, India and numerous locations within Canada.

David’s paintings and drawings are in many private, corporate and institutional art collections in Canada, the United States and abroad. In 1993 he received a great honor when the University of Calgary presented one of his paintings to Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union.

In the world of publishing, David has collaborated with writers as diverse as Canadian humorist Eric Nicol (six satirical books, including THE JOY OF HOCKEY and THE U.S. OR US, WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE, EH?) and Canadian author Rudy Wiebe (CHINOOK CHRISTMAS, a children’s story).

David’s murals can be found from Chemainus on Vancouver Island to Welland, Ontario and numerous locations in Alberta. In 2001 he collaborated with Charles Meggison to produce the cylindrical mural Those Who Stood Upon This Land Before at the Collicutt Center in Red Deer, Alberta.

Since 1986 David has been a part-time instructor in the faculty of Visual Arts at Red Deer College. David and Yvette have their workshop/studio in Benalto, Alberta.

‘height of land’

Tim Schouten’s suggestion to title our show Height of Land was quite compelling. He had come across the phrase while researching aboriginal treaties from Manitoba. “…height of land…” described a physical, topographical prominence, an identifiable marker that was readily recognized and understood by all. The title fit perfectly with my intended objectives.

I live amongst farmers and ranchers who have a reverence and respect for the land. It is a beautiful landscape I live in, but these days there is a palpable heaviness, a weight that hangs over it. Hidden beneath the vistas and valleys are the recurring fears of drought, of insect plagues, and disease… fears for livestock that have no market. We watch our neighbors struggle to take off a crop that has no value… and we know that we are all a part of it.

Much of the soil in central Alberta is very dark. When it is freshly turned there is a remarkable blackness to it that is startling. There is also something symbolic about the blackness… it signifies a beginning, and an end. As I went around the countryside last fall, the contrast between the beautiful autumn colours and the dark, freshly empty fields left me uneasy about the land for the first time in many years.

To invoke within my paintings a sense of underlying disquiet, I used a process of toning in discordant colours in the under painting. In 1989-90 I had created a series of images called Forest-Fade to Silent, dealing with acid rain in New Brunswick forests. Acid rain is insidious. You don’t see it. On the surface things look normal. It creeps up from within. To achieve the effect I was after I laid down discordant colour relationships, then interwove the image on top. The result was paintings that at first glance appeared “normal” or representational of typical forest imagery. Only after staring at the paintings for a while did something seem wrong. The unsettling effects of the hidden colours began to work their way through…much as acid rain itself. The infuse uneasiness into the landscape.

The “viewing distance” for my paintings is 10 – 15 feet. That’s the distance I step back to see if the colours are combining to give me the space and form I’m after. At that distance the top colours and the under painting begin to fuse, and the image “clicks” into focus. If one of my paintings seems unsettling up close, step back a few paces until you feel it form and fall into place. The landscape is readable then, comfortable; as it should be. Return for a close examination and the agitating undertones begin to make themselves felt. When we look beneath the surface, we are sometimes uncomfortable with what we find. Most of the images also have at least one dark field within them. What that darkness represents, I leave to the viewer. From the vantage point of a Height of Land, we can look down over the countryside, and find within it what we wish to see.