David Craven was born in London, Ontario in 1946. His work, outside of some consistent strains, has been somewhat “stylistically promiscuous” over the years, a kind of public experimentation. The devices he’s used have had multiple applications. In the 1980s, for example, there was a sense of absence in the black and white figurative work, where all the characters responded or reacted to something outside of the frame. In the work of the last 10 years he’s repeated its subtext. The subsurface organizing factor has been insistent but not benign. He’s also continued to unify painting and drawing to emphasized the work’s “in betweeness,” its floating off the wall into real space. To quote the artist from a review in Border Crossings in 2001: “let’s have an exercise that will not diminish drawing to a secondary or marginal activity and will not put painting on a plateau above that.”

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