For the month of October, the Art Gallery of Bancroft is pleased to host an exhibition by well-known local artist David McIntosh.  David served as juror in this year’s Annual Juried Show at the AGB . For his exhibition, David has selected a new group of oil paintings collectively titled “Painting the Figure”. 

In David’s own words: “my primary aim in these paintings has been to make a collection of figures, clothed and nude, in the same impressionistic style I used in my forest paintings from 2004 to 2012. I am using colour and form to explore and interpret light.

“I have maintained a life drawing practice ever since my time in art school in the mid-90’s. For me, life drawing is a foundational element of art-making; it is the way I keep my “seeing” skills sharp. So, another part of my intent here is to honour the ages-long tradition of drawing and painting from life.

“My paintings are rooted in the narrative tradition of rendering the human image and they use a visual language informed by centuries of figurative art as far back as the Classical Greek, up through the European Renaissance and into the work of Modernists like Manet, Matisse and the myriad of contemporary impressionists we see today. These paintings describe the vitality, sensuality, mystery and sexuality of the human experience – in a word, Eros. To emphasize this, in most of them, I am using forest settings as a visual context.”