Dave Gordon |
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Dave Gordon
Dave Gordon is an artist who lives and works in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Solo shows include the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, the Niagara Artist's Centre, St. Catharines, and the Art Gallery of Peterborough. He was a founding member of the Forest City Gallery in London, Ontario and the Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre in Kingston. His work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and in numerous private collections. He had four solo shows a CRAM Gallery in St. Catharines, Ontario, and participated in the International Print Exhibition at the Taller Cultural Centre in Santiago de Cuba in 2012. The exhibition subsequently travelled to Havana and four Canadian venues. He had a solo exhibit of recent paintings at the Embassy Cultural House from June 4 to July 2, 1983. Please visit Dave's website for more information.
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Recollections from 60s art scene in London, Ontario
I grew up in London, Ontario, and my first studio was underneath one shared by Murray Favro and Ron Martin at the corner of Ridout and Dundas Street. It was the mid 60’s and London was getting national attention because of the presence of Greg Curnoe and Jack Chambers. They showed in Toronto but were committed to celebrating London as a special place to work, and they were both professional artists.
There were other people around that helped create a scene: Tony Urquhart, Walter Redinger and Ed Zelenak in West Lorne, Ontario; John Boyle, Robert Fones, Bob Bozak, Royden and David Rabinovitch, Don Bonham, Steve Parzybok, kerry ferris, Jamelie Hassan, Dorene Inglis, Lynn Donoghue.…Paterson Ewen landed up in London around 1968. He had been married to Francois Sullivan and knew all of the major Quebecois artists -Borduas, Riopelle, Molinari, Tousignant and Henry Saxe, some of whom showed at 20/20 Gallery, an upstairs space on King Street that was a prototypical artist-run centre organized by some Western professors and London artists. The 20/20 Gallery ran from 1966 to 1971 and the Forest City Gallery opened in 1973 and continues to operate today.
I had graduated from teachers’ college and landed my first job teaching at H.B. Beal Technical School. Beal had an outstanding special arts program run by artist Herb Ariss, who was able somehow to hire artists even if they didn’t have teaching degrees. Don Bonham and Paterson Ewen taught at Beal and became my friends.
For a while the area near the old courthouse on Ridout Street was the cultural center of London - Dundas, Talbot, King & Ridout Streets. James Reaney ran Alpha Centre on Talbot; Fanshawe College had the Stephen Joy Gallery on Talbot; the 20/20 was near Ridout on King; the Clarendon Hotel was the local watering hole and 19 King, a former cigar factory, housed the studios of, at various times, Paterson Ewen, Dorene Inglis, kerry ferris, myself, Jamelie Hassan, Murray Favro and Robin Hobbes and Mick Durham, two English artists who were teaching at Fanshawe.
In 1968, Bonham and some others organized a show in a warehouse in east London called ‘The Warehouse Show’. I exhibited a piece of fake grass with a fake dog turd on it, bought at a noverty store; also a goldfish in a plastic pool with cotton batten clouds suspended over it. That was when I met Paterson Ewen, newly arrived from Montreal.
My first success beyond London was getting two paintings into a big survey exhibition at the AGO called “Artists 68” - shaped canvases - a pink bubble and a cloud of smoke. My 1st show at the 20/20 Gallery was more shaped canvases - clouds and bubbles, pop -art-ish, done with spray paint.
Dave Gordon, Kingston, Ontario, October 9, 2020
There were other people around that helped create a scene: Tony Urquhart, Walter Redinger and Ed Zelenak in West Lorne, Ontario; John Boyle, Robert Fones, Bob Bozak, Royden and David Rabinovitch, Don Bonham, Steve Parzybok, kerry ferris, Jamelie Hassan, Dorene Inglis, Lynn Donoghue.…Paterson Ewen landed up in London around 1968. He had been married to Francois Sullivan and knew all of the major Quebecois artists -Borduas, Riopelle, Molinari, Tousignant and Henry Saxe, some of whom showed at 20/20 Gallery, an upstairs space on King Street that was a prototypical artist-run centre organized by some Western professors and London artists. The 20/20 Gallery ran from 1966 to 1971 and the Forest City Gallery opened in 1973 and continues to operate today.
I had graduated from teachers’ college and landed my first job teaching at H.B. Beal Technical School. Beal had an outstanding special arts program run by artist Herb Ariss, who was able somehow to hire artists even if they didn’t have teaching degrees. Don Bonham and Paterson Ewen taught at Beal and became my friends.
For a while the area near the old courthouse on Ridout Street was the cultural center of London - Dundas, Talbot, King & Ridout Streets. James Reaney ran Alpha Centre on Talbot; Fanshawe College had the Stephen Joy Gallery on Talbot; the 20/20 was near Ridout on King; the Clarendon Hotel was the local watering hole and 19 King, a former cigar factory, housed the studios of, at various times, Paterson Ewen, Dorene Inglis, kerry ferris, myself, Jamelie Hassan, Murray Favro and Robin Hobbes and Mick Durham, two English artists who were teaching at Fanshawe.
In 1968, Bonham and some others organized a show in a warehouse in east London called ‘The Warehouse Show’. I exhibited a piece of fake grass with a fake dog turd on it, bought at a noverty store; also a goldfish in a plastic pool with cotton batten clouds suspended over it. That was when I met Paterson Ewen, newly arrived from Montreal.
My first success beyond London was getting two paintings into a big survey exhibition at the AGO called “Artists 68” - shaped canvases - a pink bubble and a cloud of smoke. My 1st show at the 20/20 Gallery was more shaped canvases - clouds and bubbles, pop -art-ish, done with spray paint.
Dave Gordon, Kingston, Ontario, October 9, 2020
Recent work by Dave
Shark Surprise 30"x40" a/c 2018
Lake with Porpoise 32"x40" a/c 2017
The Blues 24"x24" a/c 2019
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Lake with Sailfish 40"x30" a/c 2017
Moby Dick Cloud over the Toronto Skyline 18"x24" a/c 2015
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Kingston-based curator Jan Allen's has written about Dave's work: "In his recent paintings, surreal species displacements signal nature in crisis: a dolphin or sailfish leaps from an eastern Ontario lake, or ominous animal-shaped cloud formations - a massive whale or stretch-necked chickens - hover over the land. In these paintings Dave animates the sky with portents of a sullied natural world."
