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Pre-study of For David Judah
Home From Bragg's Island:2005
15 x 36 inches (plate size), 29 x 43 1/2 sheet size.
Line etching, watercolour, gouache and pencil with marginal drawings
Late August
24 X 36 Inches
Copper Plate Monotype
This painting started off
in a typical manner – the door was quite simply whitewashed or “limed”. Soon,
however, Ephraim Kelloway’s door went through a succession of remarkable
changes. “Uncle Eph” painted his door black, then yellow, brown, red, blue,
stovepipe silver and even a ‘bedroom pink’. When he had exhausted the effects of
individual colours, he began to explore various combinations. In addition to
this, he had taken to embellishing the surface further with a variety of hinges,
a horseshoe, a half model of a boat, and cut-outs of brightly coloured and
lettered tin. The final result was a richly painted and decorated icon.
Outport Relics - Ephraim Kelloway Door Series
20 X 26 Inches, 1994
Oil Tempera on Panel
For Edgar
Glover, The Splitting Table
24 X 36 Inches
Etching and Aquatint
Ephraim Kelloway's
People
10.25 X 7.25 Inches
Pen Drawing
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EPHRAIM KELLOWAY’S DOOR
Growing up in
outport Newfoundland during the 1940’s and 50’s I was surrounded by
what the poet Desmond Walsh describes as “the greatness that made
this place”. This greatness was rooted in the human spirit, the
product of almost five hundred years of struggle and adversity. The
writer William Gough has described it further by declaring that this
was a place where “everyone was a novel, everyone was a painting”.
The brothers
Alpheus, Jacob & Ephraim Kelloway were the next door neighbours of
my childhood. In our community of brightly painted white houses the
Kelloway “place” was known for its greyness. The weathered grey
clapboard house, perched high on a granite rock and surrounded by
grey outbuildings, had not been painted in living memory. However,
for several summers in the mid-fifties, Ephraim Kelloway painted his
shed door – some say almost fifty times.
Passing Shadow - 1990
32 X 20 inches
Etching and Aquatint
When the
painting of the door stopped, the elements took over and continued
to re-work the surface. To this day, Ephraim Kelloway’s door remains
in use with slight traces of its colourful past and former glory.*
The image of
Ephraim Kelloway and his painted door stands out clear and strong in
my memory. It inspired the 1981 etching Ephraim Kelloway’s Door, and
the same motif appears in the 1990 print Passing Shadow. During the
early eighties a variety of drawings and watercolours evolved from
the Kelloway door. A large watercolour and gouache painting from
1981 suggested the first oil painting in the series – the Red Door
of 1985. This painting gave me the idea to use the door motif as the
vehicle for a personal voyage of exploration and discovery in the
medium of painting. It would serve as a point of departure, and
allow the painting itself to become the objective.
Ephraim
Kelloway was a passing shadow on the land and sea of Bonavista
North, but his door remains and the exploration continues.
- David
Blackwood, 1990
(from the
catalogue of the artist’s first exhibition of paintings, 1990 in
Toronto)
* The door has
since been removed indoors to the artist’s studio in Wesleyville,
and the shed dismantled.
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