Harlan, 1978

Private Collection, Toronto

“David Craven,” University of Lethbridge, Glenbow Museum, Calgary, 1982, pages 1 and 3

David Craven is a New York based Canadian artist, born in London, Ontario in 1946. He graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1969 and the Ontario College of Art in 1973. “Harlan” was painted just a few years before he moved to New York with his wife, where he quickly found gallery representation. In the late 1970s Craven’s artworks were intentional, “tense and animated,” and a conscious break from what had become the trendiness of Abstract Expressionism. He disliked the concept of emotional painting, and strove to create intelligent paintings. His process included drawing or sketching a vision for his paintings before taking brush to canvas. “In a series of collages begun in 1975 and collaged paintings made in 1978, the artist employed a peculiar method. A stock of lines was first made by running a tile spreader in a single gesture through wet paint covering a strip of canvas…the given lines were brought together to compose a continuous line...these constituted a line which, while being unbroken, is not a smooth curve but a line continually dislocated.” His artwork can be found in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, the Vancouver Art Gallery, as well as private collections throughout Canada and the United States. Please Note: This artwork is not on display in our Toronto gallery but can be viewed by appointment.