DAVID CANTINE

BIO

David Cantine is a senior Canadian painter who has been painting the same still life for 36 years. The painting began as a pair of apples and its shadow and it evolved, under pressure of colour, into the present imagery. Cantine was born in Jackson, Michigan and studied at the University of Iowa (BFA, MA) before moving to Alberta and working as a professor in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta. His work has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Alberta, FAB Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art among others and is represented in numerous public collections.

STATEMENT

“I am 70 years old and have been a painter for 50 years. For the past 36 years I have painted essentially the same still-life, what began as a pair of apples and its shadow and evolved, under pressure of colour, into the present imagery. The pressure comes from the sense that colour itself is the issue here. Pictorially, apples will remain “apples” and only incidentally “red” unless re-drawn for the sake of colour. Thus the present imagery represents a kind of deconstruction of normal drawing. This is done by the strict use of symmetry. Solid unbroken colour, non-overlapping shapes, and a single viewpoint perspective within a square format. All of these features (and others) have proven necessary in helping colours to achieve a clear position and dimension within the picture, a still-life of colourful space.”