David MacWilliam: Paintings and Drawings: 1985 – 1987
Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver October 1 – 24, 1987
Catalogue Essay by Christine Elving
A Personal Repertoire
The emblematic form has characterized David MacWilliam’s paintings and drawings since the beginning of his artistic career. These archetypal shapes have become part of his personal repertoire of images. Although these forms suggest a relationship to the physical world, their context offers no clues as to their size or scale and thus they remain abstract symbols of a more intuitive, universal language.
The works in this exhibition have been chosen to represent themes and elements that originated in his earlier work, among them the container, the cornucopia, the volute, the palette, and bars of colour. As early as 1976, while still a student at NSCAD, the first container image emerged in a painting of an orange bowl with a dark shadow hovering over the surface, Untitled, 1976 (fig.1). The container appeared again in 1977, this time in a simple line painting of a cathode ray tube shape inside a glass, Untitled, 1977. Both the cornucopia and the volute ben to appear as singular, archetypal forms floating on an agitated ground as in Untitled (Cornucopia), 1981 (fig.2) and on a flat, black ground in the diptych format of Untitled (Double Helix), 1982 (fig. 3). The bards of colour, used as borders and framing devices in the current paintings, initially developed in a series of architectural or plan-like paintings and drawings that diagrammatically deal with issues of access, entrance and exit as in Untitled, 1986 (fig. 4).
Through MacWilliam’s working drawings these forms appear and are then placed into the composition and structure of the planned painting. And it is through the drawings that he makes discoveries which lead in new directions. Tuber, 1985 (cat. 1) marks the transition away from the singular archetypal forms prevalent in his work from 1981- 1983 and into the current series dealing with relationships between forms. In Tuber, a root-like form begins to extend and senate into layers that are still part of the organic whole. The drawings and painting Wedge, 1985 (cat. 2) is a further exploration of forms. Shapes are manipulated, shifted, mirrored, turned upside down, and erased to arrive at the resolved composition. The choice of colour and the quality and direction of the brushstrokes together establish the relationship of forms, the dominance and the permanence of one over another. The sequence of working drawings for Wedge shows the many stages through which MacWilliam’s paintings evolve and give some insight into his process.
Within the new works, previously emblematic forms now interrelate within the rectangle of the canvas. Variations of these shapes appear but now they exist one within another, shape one another, exert force on one another, support one another, or exist peacefully with one another. And there are new, more ambitious forms that melt together into a more complex, almost cellular organism. Together these shapes hover at times independent, at times subordinate to each other, often in tension, under pressure, or at rest, and in balance.
Many of the forms begin as simple doodles, random visual meanderings. This process of beginning from a familiar, intuitive place, and branching into areas of discovery has its parallels in other creative media. Studying these current drawings and paintings triggers memory of a personal experience that underlines the links between improvisational music (jazz) and abstract art. As a pianist, my initial attempts to abandon the musical score and compose from my own inspiration proved difficult. Each time I would sit down to just play, to improvise, the same musical phrase would emerge. I found, however, that if I continued to repeat that familiar phrase over and over it would, almost without any conscious control on my part, begin to develop counter-rhythms, melodies, and more intricate phrases. The discover was exhilarating but each time I sat down it was still necessary to begin again from that simple repetition.
Painting and drawing is a similar process of self-discovery for MacWilliam. He is not interested in adhering to traditional colour theory or using a tautological approach to artmaking. Rather he allows the intuitive, psychological, unconscious side of the self to emerge. In his own words, “No amount of virtuoso handling can overcome dull subject matter, and nothing is duller that what is known. Repetition of what one already understands is simply repetition, it is in the challenge of the unknown that outstanding artworks occur. Here lies the ideal nature of the possibility of abstraction.” 1
This ideology is shared by many artists currently working in the abstract tradition. In a recent article in Art in America, eight artists were interviewed about their commitment to abstraction. What was apparent was that all have in common an art that emerges from an intuitive base. As one of the artists, George Peck, says: “in the greatest vistas of history, in the most consciously rational and deliberative processes of the mind, there remains an instinctual force that may seem accidental, dumb or simple, but which, nonetheless, has enormous paper.” 2
Abstract art can also have a therapeutic effect on the viewer. Donal Kuspit in the February 1986 issue of Artforum discusses this function of Blinky Palermo’s work from the 1970s which he describes as being an “invitation to an inward adventure, implying a general spiritual and medicinal purpose for art. In one piece, using as oddly shaped newspaper feuilleton entitled Medizin und Seelenkenntis (Medicine and the knowledge of the soul), Palermo created a ‘mystical inner construction’ that signifies the therapeutic value of art: meditative contemplation of this subtle shape is a cure for the afflicted soul. This is Palermo’s ‘message’.” 3
The commitment of painters today to the intuitive way of working testifies to teh continued strength and relevance of an abstract aesthetic. It remains current because its converts the inner reality of artists responding to a specific time and place. The artist’s work this becomes a matter of the larger contemporary situation, one in which viewers may also recognize their own position. The fact that abstraction remains a part of art making today is an indication of our common need to re-connect with an inner state, a place where things are known and understood through the process of self-discovery.
Footnotes
1. David MacWilliam, some notes from 1985.
2. George Peck, “Talking Abstract,” interviews and edited by Lily Wei, Art in America, July 1987, p. 91.
3. Donald Kuspit, “Blinky Palermo” Artforum, February 1986, p.80.