John Down

Of Line and Landscape

Reception + Artist Talk: Friday, February 9th at 5pm

As rainforests of the West Coast become increasingly threatened, Of Line and Landscape documents the intimate conversation between the artist and the surrounding natural landscape. John Down’s studio sits high atop a granite outcrop looking into the forest where he interprets and expresses the energetic company of forest, rocks, trees and sky in acrylic, charcoal and pastel.

Using large, bold brush strokes and loose gestural mark-making with thick, opaque colour; Down distills his emotional response to natural landmarks in efficient and intuitive lines on paper. Similar to the chaos of crossing branches and root systems in a forest ecosystem; layers of pastel lines cross unpredictably creating suspended forms in tension with preserved, raw white paper edges. These organic structural forms are brought into focus as the essence of this artistic conversation.

John’s paintings and pastel drawings have been exhibited internationally and are in collections in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Seattle, New York, Tokyo, Florence, Berlin, Bonn and Venice. Born in Vancouver, Canada in 1958, he studied at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

The SCAC would like to thank our generous sponsors who make our ongoing work possible: the SCAC Membership, the District of Sechelt, the BC Arts Council, the SC Community Forest Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Sunshine Coast Community Foundation and the Sunshine Coast Credit Union.