TORONTO.- David Blackwood’s (1941-2022) stirring depictions of Newfoundland’s once thriving outport culture made him a legend in Canada. Capturing rugged beauty, hardship, and endurance, his large-scale prints are filled with memories of his childhood and myths of his ancestral home. Celebrating a lifetime of artistic experimentation, this fall, the Art Gallery of Ontario presents David Blackwood: Myth & Legend. Opening October 8, 2025, and curated by Alexa Greist, Curator & R. Fraser Elliott Chair, Prints and Drawings, AGO, this unique retrospective marries art and archive to consider the master printmaker’s process and legacy, from his early days as an art student at the Ontario College of Art (now OCADU), to his final drawing.
Born in Wesleyville, Newfoundland, to a long line of sailors and fishermen, Blackwood’s art is inseparable from his ancestry. The more than 80 works in this exhibition—among them prints, proofs and states of prints, sketches, and full-scale drawings—feature a Newfoundland of the past, awash in the faces, places and stories Blackwood knew intimately, including his mother Molly Bragg, her home on Braggs Island, neighbour Ephraim Kelloway's door, and the sealing disasters of 1914.
“Blackwood was an incredibly skilled printmaker, draughtsman, painter, and beloved teacher. The opportunity to bring visitors into the artist’s world – to see how he conceived some of his best-known works, to experience the smell of the printmaking studio, to explain the laborious process of realizing a print, from sketch to completion – is an exciting opportunity. This is all made possible thanks to the generosity of Blackwood and his family, whose donations have made the AGO the collection of record for his work,” says Greist, Curator & R. Fraser Elliott Chair, Prints and Drawings, AGO. “No subject inspired Blackwood more than the isolated outport of Wesleyville on Bonavista Bay, where he was born and raised. And while he returned most summers and through his work, I am also excited for visitors to learn about his legacy as an Ontario artist.”
Blackwood’s prints began as sketches, as did his artistic career. As a child he loved to draw, and it was his drawings that won him a scholarship to study at the Ontario College of Art (now the Ontario College of Art & Design University). There he began to experiment with the possibilities of intaglio printmaking, a technique in which the image is incised into the plate and the resulting recesses are filled with ink. Contrary to the vivid abstract forms then in vogue, early on Blackwood forged a signature style characterized by a restrained colour palette and diverse textures. Recognition for his skills was immediate, beginning in 1964 when, at the age of 23, the National Gallery of Canada acquired and exhibited one of his first works, The Search Party.
Blackwood’s lifetime of artistic experimentation is evidenced by the many sketches, test prints, and working proofs he made. In his journey to create final, editioned proofs, he often produced numerous versions, starting, stopping, and returning to the same subject, constantly refining it further. Charting the impact of subtle adjustments to colour, line, and tone on a print, are eight proofs for The Great Peace of Brian and Martin Winsor (1982), a portrait of two submerged hunters, curled beneath the body of a giant whale. Nearby, a group of thirteen works describe the evolution of Wedding on Deer Island (2020), from graphite sketch to finished print. Adjacent to Blackwood’s most famous work, Fire Down the Labrador (1980), is its corresponding copperplate.
A beloved teacher, Blackwood shared his skills widely, first as the inaugural artist-in-residence at the University of Toronto Mississauga’s Erindale College (1969–75) and then as a teacher of art at Trinity School in Port Hope for 25 years. On view in the exhibition is an extended clip from the 1976 Oscar-nominated short film Blackwood, documenting the artist in his studio as he demonstrates and describes the printmaking process.
Complementing the footage, courtesy Dr. Melanie McBride, Toronto-based researcher-practitioner, educator, and founder of the Aroma Inquiry Lab, are two custom scents, allowing visitors to immerse themselves in the scents of the printmaker’s studio and the North Atlantic.
Debuting as part of the exhibition, from Newfoundland artist Jerry Ropson, comes a video love letter to his home province and Blackwood’s enduring influence. Commissioned by the AGO, Ropson's film features footage of the Atlantic Ocean, overlaid with the artist's own renderings.
In 2018, the AGO’s Edward P. Taylor Library and Archive became the custodian of Blackwood’s personal archives. Brimming with snapshots, sketches, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, and memories, the materials date from the 1950s to early 2020. At its core are 19 of Blackwood’s own diaries, begun when he was 15. Photographs from his archive populate the exhibition, among them portraits of his parents Edward and Molly Blackwood in the 1950s and 1980s, as well as photos taken by his brother Edgar Blackwood of Bragg’s Island, in the 1990s.
Poignantly, the exhibition closes with Blackwood’s final work, made just before his death in 2022. Aunt Julia Carter, Midwife, Wesleyville (2020) is an outline drawing depicting the midwife who delivered him.
In tandem with the exhibition comes David Blackwood: Myth & Legend, a 144-page, hardcover catalogue co-published by the AGO and Goose Lane Editions. Thoughtfully illustrated with over 80 full colour reproductions of drawings and prints, alongside proofs, copperplates, and archival materials, this publication provides a unique insight into Blackwood’s creative process. This is the first publication since his passing, featuring texts by Alexa Greist, Curator & R. Fraser Elliott Chair, Prints and Drawings, AGO, and Amy Marshall Furness, Rosamond Ivey Special Collections Archivist & Head, Library & Archives, AGO. The catalogue will be available at shopAGO for $50, beginning in October 2025.
David Blackwood (1941-2022) is one of Canada's best-known printmakers. He has created an iconography of Newfoundland that is as universal as it is personal, as mythic as it is rooted in reality, as timeless as it is linked to specific events. It draws on childhood memories, dreams, superstitions, legends, the oral tradition, and the political realities of the Wesleyville community on Bonavista Bay where he was born and raised.
In 1959, Blackwood left Newfoundland to attend the Ontario College of Art where he studied under John Alfsen, Carl Schaefer, William Roberts, Eric Freifeld, Rowley Murphy and Jock MacDonald. After graduating in 1963, the artist settled in Port Hope, Ontario but continued to return to Newfoundland each summer. He died in 2022.
David Blackwood: Myth & Legend is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario.
