| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | David Janzen is a landscape painter, but his works are painted from more unusual perspectives, drawing witness to our dependence on technology and infrastructure now an integral part of our world. He paints upwards glances at radio towers and security cameras, downward, aerial views of urban sprawl, and twisted vistas disconnected from their horizon. His imagery addresses settlement, industry, and the effects of human habitation on the natural world.
For Janzen, respect for innovation, development and progress is intertwined with dread. In Janzen’s series called Transfer Station, he created large-scale paintings that were taken from a tour of Alberta’s dumps, landfills, and waste sites, exploring the idea of waste positioned directly against the wilderness. He tries to find visual poetry in that which might be odious.
David Janzen was born in Ontario and moved to Alberta in 1966. He graduated in Painting and Drawing from Alberta College of Art and Design in 1983, and is an artist/facilitator at the Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts. His work can be found in numerous public and private collections including the Art Gallery of Alberta, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Edmonton International Airport, the Royal Bank of Canada, the University of Lethbridge, and the Calgary Petroleum Club.
|