Pushing the limit on landscapes By Gilbert Bouchard Edmonton Journal Friday, March 14, 2003 Landscape painter David Alexander's recent work doesn't boast a whole lot of actual land. Taking a radical departure from his more familiar mountain; prairie and forest-scapes, his recent series of larger-than-not acrylic works at the Vanderleelie Gallery is a daring series of water paintings. There is indeed some dry land in these works. The Saskatchewan-based artist's painterly take on terra firma is limited to thin slivers of shore on the top and/or bottom of the pieces, as well as his interpretation of non-aqueous territory indirectly seen via its reflection on the fluid surface of these lake- and swamp-scapes. "Some of these paintings have been mistaken for abstractions, but they are very realistic," Alexander says of his evocative 28-canvas body of work. I'm just making sure that these paintings do indeed look like the land reflected in the water. I don't ever want to paint mountains that have been named. That's already been done. Land that is difficult to get to is always more psychologically important. As in all his work, the 55-year-old artist is more interested in pushing the form of the landscape painting to its very edges in his search of the essence, the sense of a place. That's why I cut the tops off of the mountains in my paintings. Alexander notes that his project is more about the idea of being in a place and a process of deconstructing how it is that we come to the land and how we invent the idea of the land in a nation with a gigantic landscape arid a very short history. "That's why it's important for artists to get out of their own backyard, out of the canonic landscape and off to where it gets difficult. " Not only is Alexander increasingly interested in the full context of the content of his paintings, but he is also seeking to make the fullness of his art project available to the public. "I'm at a stage in my life where I want the public to see that I don't only do these large acrylic pieces." As part of that push to transparency, Alexander also has a show at the Keyano College art gallery in Fort McMurray that displays a wide swath of work (including non-traditional painting pieces - some stapled right to the wall - as well as object-based artwork) and never-before-seen process drawings. "I'd love to take over a commercial gallery for three years where I'd work, live and host art showings right there where I do the work. "