Artist Interview: David T. Alexander

David T. Alexander possesses a heightened awareness of, and sensitivity to, the land and its constant changes which he uses to execute his nuanced and unique visions of the Canadian landscape. His works, which range from expressionist to nearly full abstraction, simultaneously embody an open-eyed reverence for nature and a deep appreciation for its subtleties, idiosyncrasies and mystery. 

In anticipation of his new solo exhibition The Northern Coast: The Second Time Around, David T. Alexander offers thoughts on a selection of these new images as well as insight into his processes, and discusses the unexpected effect of returning to the coast on his approach to depicting it. The Northern Coast: The Second Time Around opens at Bau-Xi Vancouver on April 12 and runs through April 26, 2025.

David T. Alexander, Landscape East in the Rearview Mirror. Acrylic on canvas, 47.5 x 68 inches

For these new works I focused on places that I thought I knew while I was young, and that I’m drawn to now. I lived on the West Coast for my first 27 years, first going up and down the coast in a tugboat at age 17. This now is a totally new experience – it’s not at all what I expected coming back. I was thinking I’d be going back to what I knew, but it’s no longer the same. Also, people thought I’d go right to the sea and become absorbed in ocean vistas when I got back to the coast, but I feel that the coast is about a lot more than the sea itself.

I have spent the last four years observing the contemporary coastal landscape upon returning to live on it, and found that it has changed and is continuing to change with time. With this, an extension of the purpose of my work has developed, which is a disruption of traditional landscape art making – a disruption caused by change in climate, light, shape, and indeed the effects of politics and big money on the land itself. They are all interferences within the visual realm of the coast. I see this as the catalyst for a new step to my process of learning and painting - the traditional replication of landscape is no longer important or enough. 

David T. Alexander aged 17 on the north coast

It’s a very long coast, and the change from the Canada/US border up to Alaska is profound. This coast is almost pristine in terms of public access because there are minimal roads. Most people in BC or Canada have never really seen it, as most of these places can only be reached by seaplanes and boats. What becomes evident is aspects like how the land looks after we take from it what we want using technology - for example, the carved and open quarries that widen with continued gravel extraction. I make it a point to endeavour to access places that cannot be easily reached – I feel driven to witness as much of the land as I can to reflect the current reality in my paintings.
My influences of expressionism are from Edvard Munch, Gustav Klimt and Emily Carr - they are evident in these works and require a nod to the artists of the past.


On the Wet Series and Dry Series:

This denotation doesn’t mean anything other than it puts my paintings into two contexts. It made sense to me simply because there will always be water and there will always be land. 

David T. Alexander, Small View, Large Feelings. Acrylic on canvas, 67.75 x 47.25 inches

This one looks like it could be a universe or an abyss; the body of water I was painting here is actually very small. It’s a duck pond near my home. I consider this painting to be an encapsulation of what actually goes on in nature here on the coast.

David T. Alexander, When Lost, Think Place. Acrylic on canvas, 47.75 x 61.5 inches

This is where I got lost for hours – it is on the Sunshine Coast, BC. I am looking in at the land from the coast, rather than looking out towards the water. Perhaps this is the opposite of one’s typical impulse, but I find this practice revealing and underappreciated.



David T. Alexander, Yellow Hoops In the Fall. Acrylic on canvas, 47.75 x 39.75 inches

There is a pond near where my daughter used to live that I covet at a certain time of year, annually – it is an endless source of inspiration. This painting is of that pond. The reeds there could even lend themselves to sculpture.



David T. Alexander, Grandma Had 5 Sons To Whom She Was A Saint, and 1 Daughter. Acrylic on canvas, 47.5 x 65.75 inches

This one is SO coastal! It is of the coastal area of Desolation Sound and constitutes a rare indication of human presence in my work. It is inspired by a house my grandmother had on Gambier Island (this is not the actual house) - her sons drank too much, referenced by the bottles lined up along the sides of the house. The image represents the passage of time and the mystery of the coast.


 David T. Alexander, Coastal North, Bleached. Acrylic on canvas, 64.5 x 47.75 inches

This painting is a reference to my 2022 drawing “Don’t Draw the Trees”, where rather than draw them specifically, I worked around them; I did that here too but went further with it. It is quite a classic image of the BC coast. These trees perched on the edge of the rocky land are dead – possibly having been victims of forest fire.

Don't Draw the Trees, pencil crayon on paper, 2022


What the Indigenous people did with the totems they erected was they left them to be subsumed by nature in due course. That is also what happens naturally with clustered trees that are no longer living - they spread outward slowly and eventually fall. The Indigenous people understood this natural process when building the totems. Seeing that these trees were doing this very thing was the first time that this connection crystallized for me.
This painting is the extent of more traditional coastal vistas for me right now – maybe there will be more in the future.

David T. Alexander, Trees For A Particular Coastal Forest. Acrylic on canvas, 56.75 x 65.25 inches

There is something different about each tree here – I wanted to capture each one as an individual. It’s not something you can see just by looking at them. Like this, they are like an audience in an amphitheatre – it is almost absurdist. The expressionistic influence on me is very evident here. The trees are looking at me, at us, not the other way around.

On his frequent use of brown:
Robert Rauschenberg was criticized for his love of grey…

On his depiction of bright colours in nature:
I see the colours as being all there in the landscape - I just amplify them. For example, yellow is an exaggeration of the winter light in the north. There are landscape painters in northern regions such as Norway and Denmark where the region is identified by light – these artists employ variations of this yellow light. The colour that pertains most to the coast is green, but the green is enhanced when the sky is grey – this relates to colour theory. The grey enhances and intensifies all the greens, and I further enhance this effect. So, the expression of individuality comes from many ways of looking at the landscape.

The artist on Ellesmere Island, Canadian high arctic,1988


On his creative process:
I arrive at the final version in many ways. The first source I use is usually drawing, often on site (sometimes inside if the weather is not cooperating). I always think about the art inherent in a drawing. For example, sometimes a drawing I did will literally rub off onto the facing page in my sketchbook; I often think the qualities of the rubbed-off drawing are more effective than the actual drawing I did! So, there is an element of chance in recording, and a lot can happen in the process of drawing. When drawing, anything is a tool for me to record what I see. I look around and use what I find, such as charcoal from a fire, berries, or freeze-thaw “rotten rock” which I found at 12,000 feet beside a glacier (it contains iron ore rust - I once grabbed a handful of it and swiped it on paper and it did the most wonderful things). I identify what is there and think about how and why it got there. 

The other sources used are photographic material - my own photographs taken on site, sourced directly from the landscape. I also employ storytelling - I enhance what I saw with my sources of history of a particular area. For example, with Smuggler Cove (where alcohol was smuggled between Canada and the US) – I look at the area and think about why it’s called what it’s called, thinking about the space through both historical and contemporary lenses. All these sources and methods are very interesting to me and when combined they enable a richer, more multidimensional work.

On whether fire is more on his mind now due to the escalating environmental changes in BC:

Oh yeah – we used to live in the Okanagan, and we had to flee from fire once, and uneasily sat out two subsequent fires in the last years that we lived there. Fire is now encroaching on the coastal region as well. Fire is reflected in my work more and more. 

The inner visual discussions I have about land include things such as land use, abuse, inclement weather, absolute calm, and years of resource extraction seen up and down the coast. All this is incorporated into what I depict. It is part of our contemporary society. We are the witnesses. The paintings are of our time. I’m not a geologist or photographer but it is all part of what I do as an artist.

-David T. Alexander, 2025

The artist in his Sunshine Coast studio, 2025