Alex Colville Painting Technique

On a River was created in 1996 by Alex Colville in Contemporary Realism style. Ad Great Selection Of Art Plus Custom Framing.

Alex Colville Explained Perhaps A Little Too Much The Star

Colville has devoted intensive study to European painting.

Alex colville painting technique. All elements of the painting train soldier and girl are not in motion. All At Amazing Prices. Colville has mapped out a kind of geodesic geometry which carves the.

His compositions are rigorously constructed according to a precise geometry and executed with a technique that consists of minuscule dabs of paint applied meticulously dot by dot. Toronto Ontario Canada. Like almost all of Colvilles work since Nude and Dummy 1950 this painting is based upon a detailed skeleton of geometry.

Alex Colville moved with his family to Amherst NS in 1929 and studied at Mount Allison 1938-42. Ad Great Selection Of Art Plus Custom Framing. No component is placed randomly or as simply a reflection of observation.

By painting largely out of my head and by using an arduous technique I aim to produce paintings which are constructions on a flat surface each with an individual identity Dow 1972. He has also experimented with acrylic emulsion on masonite and oil and synthetic resin on masonite. Painting fresco engraving drawing.

Colvilles 1976 canvas Dog and Bridge sold for more than US24 million -- doubling its estimated value. On graduating he joined the army and in 1944 was sent to Europe as a war artist. One a small study drawing for the 1973 painting Woman In Bath is dizzying in its fussy precision.

Born in Toronto Colville moved as a boy to Amherst Nova Scotia with his family. A dark horse is running off from the foreground along railway track directly in the path of an approaching engine whose steam is modestly bleaching the sky. The most famous Colville painting is Horse Train One could not hope for symbolism more dead obvious.

Here the paintings elements are placed according to an underlying meticulously constructed geometric skeleton rather than the more ad hoc and Impressionistic style he had learned at school and employed in much of his war art. Nude and Dummy was the first of Colvilles paintings to use the perspectival system that became his signature technique. David Alexander Colville painter born 24 Aug 1920 in Toronto Ontario died 16 July 2013 in Wolfville Nova Scotia.

The given image is static which is characteristic to the style of Alex Colvilles paintings. Alex Colville David Alexander Colville PC CC ONS. Create Unique Inspiring Spaces with Trending Artwork at Everyday Low Prices.

In Colvilles paintings outlines contour proportion and geometry all reinforce the impression of precision. Wolfville Nova Scotia Canada. Two key elements were of great importance to Colville.

Create Unique Inspiring Spaces with Trending Artwork at Everyday Low Prices. All At Amazing Prices. The sewing table had belonged to his mother and the pistol was his Second World War service-issue revolver.

Colville began by applying the technique to tempera but around 1958 he extended it to oil painting. The process can often take months. He changes the proportions and the relative scale between objects in order to heighten or otherwise have an impact on the emotional charge of the painting.

The work had been owned privately for decades and. Only then does the slow and patient process of painting begin. It attracts the interest of the viewer who analyzes the possibility of finding hidden meaning of the painting.

To elaborate Colvilles depiction of things is not dictated by the technology of the camera. Layer upon layer of thinned paint is applied to a primed wooden panel and the opaque surface finally sealed with transparent lacquer. He returned to Canada late in 1945 and worked in Ottawa on paintings based on his European.

Alex Colville Art Canada Institute