David T. Alexander

David T. Alexander (born January 13, 1947) is a Canadian painter, known for breathing new life into the landscape tradition of Canada as well as for working in a serious and ambitious manner to reinvigorate the contemporary practice of landscape painting.

Biography Alexander's mother and grandmother were painters and his mother, by chance, befriended the niece of Emily Carr's friend Ira Dilworth, bringing the painter and her influence into Alexander's world at an early date. He began painting seriously in 1966 in Steveston High School due to the encouragement of a tough but sympathetic art teacher, Mrs Stavrakoff. He attended the Vancouver School of Art and Design (today's Emily Carr University of Art and Design), Langara College (1967–1970), and Vancouver Community College (1971–1972), then attended art school in Nelson, British Columbia, at the Kootenay School of the Arts (then affiliated with the now defunct Notre Dame University) for a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), graduating in 1978.

In 1979, Alexander attended one of the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops with Friedel Dzubas and John Elderfield, and, because of the positive experience he had in the workshop, moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in 1980. He continued to attend artists' workshops at Emma Lake, such as those given by Tim Scott (1984), and Maryann Harmon (1985). In 1985, he received a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the University of Saskatchewan and completed the thesis component of his degree on the work of Claude Monet. (Critics would later link his work to that of Monet and in his later painting, Alexander would sometimes use subjects that are related to Monet, especially to Monet's late work.) In 2003, he and his family moved to the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, near Kelowna, British Columbia where he has his home and studio. Alexander was featured in an episode of the Gemini Award-winning television series Landscape As Muse (2008). His painting has a "two-way grip", said the newspaper. It opened with a major multi-author book published by McGill–Queen's University Press. The show, a retrospective, combined large and small paintings with works on paper and Alexander's sketches in sketchbooks. In 2023, Alexander showed 20 years of work in a show titled David T. Alexander: Revisiting at Peter Robinson Gallery in Edmonton. A talk on YouTube accompanied the show.

Selected public collections Alexander's works are represented in collections such the Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa), Canadian Embassies (Warsaw and Beijing), Concordia University (Montreal), the University of Saskatchewan, Department of Foreign Affairs (Kuala Lumpur and Berlin), Edmonton Art Gallery, Institute of Art (Iceland), MacKenzie Art Gallery (Regina), Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon), Museum London, Ontario; Saskatchewan Arts Board, University of Toronto, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. He is represented by Bau-Xi Gallery and Evoke Contemporary in Santa Fe, New Mexico.