Waste Land, 1986

David Bolduc was born in Toronto in 1945. He attended the Ontario College of Art for one year and later studied at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts School (1964-65) with Jean Goguen.

Bolduc’s paintings share a characteristic format—layered expanses of colour, punctuated by a usually centralized image. These severely frontal images are painted in brilliant contrasting hues; often, juxtaposing lines of vibrant pigment are squeezed directly from the tube. The relationship of figure to ground creates a duality and dynamic equilibrium within the painting itself. The figure dominates and seems to hover above an active field of colour. Thus, both colour and form are essential to sensation and meaning in Bolduc’s paintings. The figure’s iconic position in the center of the painting is rich with the possibility for metaphor.

In his Concise History of Canadian Painting, Denis Reid describes Bolduc’s painterly concerns this way: “Like others in Toronto who had re-established a sense of continuity with Western painting’s venerable history during the seventies, Bolduc found a working framework that situates his activity within a meaningful tradition – the making of decorative objects of commanding presence. The significant embellishing he practices and celebrates rises directly from the broadest cultural base – a fundamental human urge to enrich life by offering evidence of the particularly moving kind of pleasure conferred by the practiced, skillful conjunction of hand and mind.”
David Bolduc is widely regarded as one of the premier practitioners of abstract painting of his generation.