SIGNS OF THE TIMES

September 1997

by Barry Stagg

DAVID BLACKWOOD: WHERE ARE YOU?

I keep waiting for David Blackwood to put out some black, brooding etching showing what Newfoundland will be like when oil starts spurting out of derricks and age old granite and limestone get blackened with the grime of prosperity. Instead of stark images depicting the dignified retreat of our outports we may see some sort of elegant illustration of the inferno of prosperity slaking Newfoundland's terrible thirst for independence and self- reliance.

Blackwood's images of dignity and darkness and melancholy and history can have a modern canvas: the dark satanic mills of Newfoundland. A William Blake revival at the end of Newfoundland's twentieth century would be a welcomed relief from the tedium of fiscal hospitalization that Newfoundlanders now endure.

And what of Christopher Pratt's wonderfully understated pastels? Pratt, with the Newfoundland flag tucked securely and famously away in his bulky portfolio surely has a bit of pent up energy left to spread over the image of a frenzied and struggling Newfoundland grappling with wealth and oil energy in ironic counterbalance to the banality of poverty that Confederation has become.

There are masterpieces waiting to be created from the reality of the racing petroleum economy of a province with less people than Scarborough. This is where a mere shrug in the world petroleum industry could bring about a complete re-facing of the economy we call Newfoundland. We must have the great artists interpret these things for history and for catharsis and in vindication of our troubles. Above all we must have our great artists interpret these things for themselves and for us. It will not do to consign our greatest creators to a perpetual perch on the shelf in that great voyeuristic tourist shop that Newfoundland has become for the mainlander and his twenty dollar bill (preferably American).

Newfoundland in 1997 needs its own Blake, its own Tennyson, its Constable, its Gainsborough. The chroniclers of Newfoundland's industrial revolution need only the revolution as inspiration. Let the inspiration begin now.

The Globe and Mail published a column today (August 8, 1997) on the life of the late Gregory Power, Newfoundland polymath. Mr. Power was of my father's generation but born in 1909, on my brother's birthdate, March 22. I remember him as the leading Smallwood iconoclast. His breakaway from Smallwood was a political legend in Newfoundland. His departure from the Smallwood orbit in the mid 1950's presaged the political upheaval that eventually dethroned Smallwood in 1972.

Just as we commemorate our legends we must also go about the business of creating new ones and using the power of our artists to describe what is happening now. Newfoundland stands on the brink, as usual. The peopled province of Newfoundland must give its artists enough grist for their creative mills so that nostalgia and irony and satire can find a new companion with the exultation of gritty, honest prosperity at last.

There are worthy successors to the art of Christopher Pratt and to the eloquence of E.J. Pratt now stirring in the uneasiness of a hard land feeding dangerously upon its golden harvest of courage and endurance. We must find a motherlode soon to ease the draw upon our precious psychic capital. The decades, the centuries the lifetimes spent in search of a prosperous homeland must yield a bounty soon.

The words of Newfoundland's poet laureate E.J. Pratt need repeating here:

"Here the tides flow,

And here they ebb;

Not with that dull, unsinewed tread of waters

Held under bonds to move

Around unpeopled shores-

Moon-driven through a timeless circuit

Of invasion and retreat;

But with a lusty stroke of life

Pounding at stubborn gates,

That they might run

Within the sluices of men's hearts,

Leap under throb of pulse and nerve,

And teach the sea's strong voice

To learn the harmonies of new floods,

The peal of cataract,

And the soft wash of currents

Against resilient banks,

Or the broken rhythms from old chords

Along dark passages

That once were pathways of authentic fires."

Let the magnificence of Pratt be our inspiration in these anxious times.


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