David Antonides is a Canadian artist who studied art in Vancouver, New York, and Europe. He portrays cityscapes and images of urban behavior in a way peculiar to himself, and himself only.
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David Antonides is a highly acclaimed artist who has embodied the role of being the spokesperson of people’s collective unconsciousness. Due to his fascination with urban landscapes, he began painting them, and he believes an urban landscape is where individual memories melt into a collective unity. In doing so, he uses watercolor due to its ability to let uncertainty flow on the canvas and find its own way.
Antonides was born in Whitehorse, Yukon in 1958, he received formal art training in Vancouver, New York, and Europe, where he discovered his love for printmaking workshops and decided to stay in Berlin permanently.
Antonides draws inspiration from a variety of artistic styles and traditions, including Asian calligraphy and American Abstract Expressionists. His work is moving towards a meeting of Asian-influenced energetic brushwork and low-resolution digitized realism. His use of watercolor as his preferred medium is distinctive as he manages to create weight and drama not typically associated with this medium. Antonides views water as a collaboration between intention and its own laws of nature and serendipity, and he lets it flow on its own accord.
David Antonides, Vancouver Hotel. Courtesy of Art Works Gallery
Antonides' work often focuses on large format cityscapes and urban behavior. When he is painting cityscapes he doesn’t forgo representing the effects of nature in his paintings. Here, nature is an overarching theme, encompassing urban life with its absence as much as its presence. He aims to capture the organic natural world and inorganic architecture that symbiotically comprise cities, showing the paradoxical coexistence of seemingly “opposite” elements existing in harmony. Antonides believes that cities are the most complex physical expression of human culture, and he is interested in expressing the emotional impact of tangible urban spaces on humans.
In his work “Vancouver Hotel”, he displays the complex physical expression of human culture reflected in architectural structures and tangible urban spaces. He uses vibrant but limited colors which transmit serenity to the viewers. Antonides seeks to go beyond mere representations of urban landscapes and instead presents these landscapes after precisely merging them with the human experience. As a part of the process, he uses marks and brushwork as techniques to showcase the contrast, movement, and depth he is trying to convey.
David Antonides, City Monument. Courtesy of Art Works Gallery
In some of Antonides’ paintings, for instance, “City Monument”, viewers may see less identifiable images of people as suppressed identities, close-up views of people wandering through the streets. Each is a transitory representation of the other and iconic of our daily experience. Antonides wants these images to be memory faded, imperfect, reduced to optimize personal capacity for memory, becoming points for people to contextualize themselves as they become an outer eye.
Antonides' paintings are highly sought after by collectors worldwide, and he has won numerous awards in Germany for his work. He regularly participates in solo and group exhibitions throughout North America and Germany. Antonides' work is a universal icon of memory for people that, in its abstraction, is inclusive. His paintings reimagine abstract memories onto physical surfaces, leaving viewers with the remnants of this elusive substance that we hold dear. Antonides' work invites viewers to find themselves as they lose control and become part of a collective unconsciousness.
Cover image: David Antonides, Arc 1355P. Courtesy of Art Works Gallery
Written by Naz Akgun
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