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David Tycho, Black Tusk #22 (2007), acrylic on canvas [Petley Jones Gallery, Vancouver BC, Nov 22-Dec 5]
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David Tycho’s abstract expressionist landscapes are based on his frequent backpacking treks to the cinder flats, lava flows and ice fields surrounding Black Tusk, an extinct volcano near Whistler BC.
Tycho brings his own unique energy to lean images of white snow, black basalt gravel and grey rocks. Painted in a style reminiscent of 1950s abstraction, the minimal works evoke an other-worldly terrain.
Tycho studied art at the University of British Columbia in the early 1980s under Gordon Smith, an unabashedly vigorous painter of the Pacific West Coast. Subsequent travels in Japan introduced Tycho to the exquisitely simple painting of Zen monks.
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David Tycho, Black Tusk #12 (2007), acrylic on canvas [Petley Jones Gallery, Vancouver BC, Nov 22-Dec 5]
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Tycho’s current series of approximately 24 paintings was inspired by numerous trips to the Garibaldi Park region, where he found something very powerful and magnetic that he couldn’t explain.
With the distinctive eroded mountain top “burned onto [his] subconscious… almost as an archetypal symbol or motif, much the way Mount Fuji is to the Japanese”, Tycho embarked on an extensive journey of integrating the Black Tusk landscape with a personal approach to painting.
Tycho’s work has been exhibited in Vancouver, Victoria, Whistler, Edmonton, Seattle, Los Angeles, Geneva, Brussels and Manila, and is collected worldwide. This is his first solo show in Vancouver in nine years. The powerful paintings range from three to six feet in size.
www.petleyjones.com
