David Alexander Colville Analysis

Born David Alexander Colville in 1920 in Ontario, he became later known as one of the great Canadian artist under the name Alex Colville. Known for his talent to create painstakingly crafted realism in his paintings, he quickly became popular after haven been a war artist in World War II. He creates ordinary everyday experiences and turns them into something that is extraordinary. Colville’s time as a war artist greatly impacted his painting and his style as it changed the way he saw the world and this impact can be clearly seen in some of his work. While he was born in Toronto he soon moved to Nova Scotia where he developed pneumonia. This was before antibiotics were regularly used to treat pneumonia so his recovery took around 6 months. Not only did Colville almost die, he spent those months in lonely isolated bedrest. This led to him becoming more introverted

One particularly evident example of this is the painting, Soldier and Girl at station, which was painted in 1953, a little over a decade after the war had ended. Furthermore, the sense of foreboding that is seen he many of his painting could be a sign of the impact of having lived through the war; having lived in a state of every moment could be your last state of mind can have a lasting impact of a person psyche. Furthermore, Colville akin to many people “who had been in the Second World War, many of life's most basic, bourgeois things — like having a job, a house, a car, children, a dog — those became precious things.” This can be seen in his chose of subject in the majority of his later paintings. “He described war as a “total collapse of any kind of control or order. Anything could happen. If you’ve seen this once, you know you may see it again.” His paintings repeatedly return to this understanding of the turmoil and violence that exist just below the surface of