Bad Guys II – Exploring the Face of Evil
David A. Haughton
May 11 – 24, 2017
Noon – 5 pm daily
April 10, 2017 – Vancouver – BC artist David A. Haughton ‘captures’ Bad Guys in his two-week exhibition opening May 11 at the Visual Space Gallery on Dunbar Street. Haughton’s new work is a surprising departure from his earlier landscapes of the West Coast. Three suites of paintings: Mug Shots, Evil in Disguise and Gangsters are featured in this collection of 40 paintings.
Haughton writes: “My father was an Episcopalian minister who left active ministry early, disillusioned with the hypocrisy of the church, and the discord he felt preaching justice in prisons, or God’s mercy to the family of a victim of polio. I inherited my father’s skeptical questioning, if not his ultimate faith. From an early age I have had a silent, ongoing ‘internal discussion’ with the Judeo-Christian God. I find myself asking: ‘O God, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent… why allow suffering by innocents? During the past decade, I have been asking: ‘why have you created evil’ and ‘why does evil so often triumph?’. Thomas Aquinas concluded that the existence of evil in the world was the greatest obstacle to Christian faith and doctrine. Certainly, it eroded my belief, but also pushed me to begin an exploration in paint. These works are the extension of that 'conversation' into the realm of art - catapulting dialectic into lines and brushstrokes.”