Monuments IX, Circa 2020

David Kaarsemaker  

David Kaarsemaker holds a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from the University of Ottawa. He was a finalist in the 2025 Salt Spring National Art Prize and the 2017 RBC Painting Competition. His work is included in the collections of Global Affairs Canada, the City of Ottawa, the City of St John's, The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, and the Newfoundland Provincial Art Bank. He has participated in group exhibitions at the National Gallery of Canada, The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, Art Mûr, and Bau-Xi Gallery and had solo exhibitions at de Montigny Contemporary, Carleton University Art Gallery, Karsh-Masson Gallery, Galerie Montcalm, and Christina Parker Gallery. Kaarsemaker lives in Victoria, B.C.

Developed through extended walks in remote landscapes, David Kaarsemaker's paintings bring distant vistas into dialogue with close observation, collapsing proximity and expanse, enclosure and horizon.

His paintings are made through successive layers of opaque and translucent applications, with paint added and removed at each stage, allowing light to emanate from within the image itself. Referencing both stained glass and LCD screens, the resulting glow hovers between natural and synthetic registers, situating perception at a threshold where the atmospheric becomes structural.