Mourning David Blackwood & Lamenting the Fish of the Sea

                                                            Master Mariner etching -- David Blackwood 1994

With news of the death of the exceptional Newfoundland Canadian artist, David Blackwood, this past weekend I had to seek out one work which intrigued me for years. It depicts a pensive figure looking at charts while a small fishing boat passes by on a nearby cove. I noticed a scripture reference at the bottom from the prophetic book of Isaiah in the Hebrew scriptures:

 Those who fish will mourn;
    all who cast hooks in the Nile will lament,
    and those who spread nets on the water will languish.

                                                    Isaiah 19:8 NSVue 

For a decade we lived not far from Port Hope, Ontario,where Blackwood resided in his latter years. A parishioner who knew David and his wife, Anita, kindly invited us to a dinner party of eight which included them. I sat next to David for several hours and we chatted about Newfoundland and some of his pieces, including Master Mariner. The man in the etching was his uncle and the biblical reference was provided by a family member. 

Master Mariner was created a couple of years after the declaration of  what was supposed to be a temporary cod fishery moratorium. Thirty years later Newfoundlanders are still lamenting, mourning, languishing because of the disappearance of a fish species once so abundant its disappearance was simply unimaginable. 

Blackwood's art can be both ominous and mystical, reflecting the realities of a harsh and beautiful Newfoundland landscape and seascape. How strangely appropriate that he died as various media reflected on the end of what had been a sustaining fishery for centuries. 

A Globe and Mail piece noting Blackwood's death drew upon the perspective of Emma Butler, who represented him for years “I think that some of David’s work is about survival. It’s all about triumph – that’s the word he used – over hardship. Because Newfoundland is still here.” 

There is a darkness in much of Blackwood’s work...but there is also a sense of awe: the lurking whales, the towering icebergs, the radiant light guiding people as they fish, build and gather. 

“His work is haunting,” [Mireille Eagan, curator at the Rooms in St. John's] said. “He didn’t shy away from difficult subject matter, but he also found beauty in those same stories – the stories of loss, and the cod moratorium, and resettlement.” “Nobody made art like him,” she added.