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terresauvage: David Lloyd Blackwood Fire Down on the Labrador, 1980 ~ “Blackwood has always set the human element in his art within that same looming scale, the ocean and headland and restless night… In “Loss of Flora S. Nickerson” and in “Fire Down on the Labrador”, the human disasters are happening in the wings, barely registering against the vastness of the North Atlantic and its creatures. I’ve always been struck by how often light is a peripheral presence in Blackwood’s best-known work, whether in the torches of sealers adrift in the cavernous winter night, the helpless ship ablaze in “Fire Down on the Labrador”, or the tangential gleam of sunrise or sunset just offstage in his many seascapes… The sheer scope and eerie beauty of the landscape he depicts inspire both wonder and dread in equal measure. The cumulative effect of his work is to make the history of settlement of this island – and all human endeavour beside it – seem impossibly fragile and fugitive. And heartbreakingly tenacious and honourable”. - Michael Crummey
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terresauvage:

David Lloyd Blackwood

Fire Down on the Labrador, 1980

~

“Blackwood has always set the human element in his art within that same looming scale, the ocean and headland and restless night… In “Loss of Flora S. Nickerson” and in “Fire Down on the Labrador”, the human disasters are happening in the wings, barely registering against the vastness of the North Atlantic and its creatures. I’ve always been struck by how often light is a peripheral presence in Blackwood’s best-known work, whether in the torches of sealers adrift in the cavernous winter night, the helpless ship ablaze in “Fire Down on the Labrador”, or the tangential gleam of sunrise or sunset just offstage in his many seascapes… The sheer scope and eerie beauty of the landscape he depicts inspire both wonder and dread in equal measure. The cumulative effect of his work is to make the history of settlement of this island – and all human endeavour beside it – seem impossibly fragile and fugitive. And heartbreakingly tenacious and honourable”. - Michael Crummey

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