"First Light" Painting

David Tomlin is a self-taught Canadian artist who pursues his talent through painting and coursework at the Haliburton School of Art + Design (Ontario, Canada). David was born in Kingston, Ontario and was an Ontario elementary school principal in Toronto until his retirement. David has developed his unique style over the course of 20 years of painting and learning. He has participated in numerous art and gallery shows and many of his paintings are in private collections in Ontario, Alberta, Florida, New York and France. David develops his paintings from his many on-location digital photos and works from his studio in Toronto, Ontario.

David was first inspired by the work of impressionist painters who capture a feeling or experience of life as a visual impression by exploring the changing effects of light and colour on a subject. This style is reflected in many of David’s earlier paintings and it continues to influence his painting techniques.

As an artist interested in developing a uniquely Canadian body of work, David became drawn to landscape paintings which employ a different visual language to depict the wild and stark beauty of Canada’s landscapes. Featuring abstracted shapes in vibrant colour, his paintings evoke the tension between the opposing forces of order and chaos found in nature. Each surreal landscape is created to evoke emotion and dialogue, inviting the viewer to reflect on their own experience of such an encounter.

David finds additional inspiration in the painting techniques of the First Nations artists, particularly those who explore humanity’s relationship to nature. Many of David’s latest works attempt to bridge these two artistic expressions to create his own unique interpretation of a landscape. The resulting strain between these varied expressions of created order evoke the effects of humankind’s tendency to impose his will and control over nature to create a transformed reality. The results can display goodness, truth, and beauty or profoundly distort and debase creation in the service of the opposite.

What ultimately inspires David is his desire to visually express those moments which connect humanity with the divine, in all its variations. Each of his paintings expresses some aspect of David’s search for goodness, truth, and beauty in life. He approaches each painting as an opportunity to think, feel and create.