David Kaarsemaker

It was very touching to see so many of the great people in the Ottawa arts community at my opening with @stanzietooth on Friday. Thank you so much for coming out! ‘Eventide’ runs @demontignycontemporary until May 2. Thank you to @szemingwu for the group shots

𝚆𝚎 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚍𝚛𝚘𝚙𝚙𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚗𝚎𝚡𝚝 𝚎𝚡𝚑𝚒𝚋𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 🌱 𝙴𝚟𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚍𝚎 - 𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚣𝚒𝚎 𝚃𝚘𝚘𝚝𝚑 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙳𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚍 𝙺𝚊𝚊𝚛𝚜𝚎𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎𝚛. Opening Reception: Friday, March 27 From: 18:00-20:00 Where: de Montigny Contemporary, 858 Bank St., Suite 101, Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 3W3 Eventide is an exhibition that brings together the work of Stanzie Tooth (@stanzietooth ), from Toronto, ON, and David Kaarsemaker (@dkaarse ), from Victoria, BC. Both artists investigate the attributes of light as both material and metaphor in two distinct series: Stanize Tooth’s The Blue Hour and David Kaarsemaker’s Sun Dogs. Although their individual endpoints differ, light is both an atmosphere and an active force that reveals and obscures the autonomy of the natural world.  Tooth’s nocturnal scenes take place in self-sustaining ecologies like gardens, where flora and fauna partake in their own fragile cycles of life that do not depend on humans, who exist as viewers under the moonlight’s attraction.  In Kaarsemaker’s paintings, light becomes an outward response to geological and immeasurable moments in time as he looks at monumental terrains of rock, trees, and horizons. Together, the works move from intimate encounters with the landscape toward a speculative realism. Organic forms become architectures. Light plays off these structures and continues past what they saw or what we see. Images: 1. Tooth Portrait 2. Stanzie Tooth, Seer, 2026, Ink and watercolour on paper, 20 x 16 inches, framed 3. Stanzie Tooh, Lunar, 2026, Ink and watercolour on paper, 20 x 16 inches, framed 4. Kaarsemaker Portrait 5. David Kaarsemaker, This Rock, 2026, Oil on canvas, 27 X 36 inches, unframed 6. David Kaarsemaker, Shimmer II, 2026, Oil on canvas, 16 x 14 inches, unframed

The Sooke Flowline is an abandoned 44 km concrete aqueduct that snakes through the Sooke Hills. I ran the length of it around this time last year and have been trying different approaches to painting it. This is my most recent experiment. I loved the feeling of flow that I felt moving along this strange structure. It is overgrown with ferns and mosses, gets suspended over ravines with trestles, and sometimes gets broken up or disappears into the ground.

Sun Dogs is the latest series by David Kaarsemaker (@dkaarse ). In this new body of paintings, Kaarsemaker turns to an optical phenomenon in which faintly coloured light flanks the sun when it rests low on the horizon. The experience of encountering this atmospheric event informs a body of work concerned with iridescence and perceptual instability. Developed through extended walks in remote landscapes, the paintings bring distant vistas into dialogue with close observation, collapsing proximity and expanse, enclosure and horizon. Built through successive layers of faintly pigmented primary glazes, with paint added and removed at each stage, the surfaces allow 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. David Kaarsemaker, This Rock 1, Oil on canvas, 27 x 36 Inches, 2026

‘Sun Spots’ - written by @jason.stovall on the work of @dkaarse and @stanzietooth opening Mar 27th from 6-8pm at @demontignycontemporary in Ottawa. Works: Stanzie Tooth, Seer, Ink on watercolour paper, 16 x 12 Inches, 2026. David Kaarsemaker, This Rock 1, Oil on canvas, 27 x 36 Inches, 2026. David Kaarsemaker, Sundog Path, Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 Inches, 2026. Stanzie Tooth, Lunar, Ink on watercolour paper, 16 x 12 Inches, 2025.

‘Eventide’, my two-person exhibition with @stanzietooth opens this Friday @demontignycontemporary . I’m excited to share my new paintings and see Ottawa friends again. The opening is Friday, March 27 from 6 to 8 pm. Image 1. This Rock 2, oil on canvas, 27”x36”, 2026 Image 2. This Rock 1, oil on canvas, 27” x 36”, 2026 Image 3. This Rock 3, oil on canvas, 27”x36”, 2026

Some details of new paintings for my upcoming show @demontignycontemporary with @stanzietooth . Eventide opens March 27 at de Montigny Contemporary in Ottawa.

Hello David! @dkaarse is an old friend and art colleague who will be in Yukon for a couple months. Since he is also a painting teacher, we thought we’d take the opportunity to roll out a couple classes. Scroll through @understoryartclasses to catch his vibe! Classes are 6-9pm, and run 6 weeks each: Wednesday Oct 15 start - intermediate. Monday Oct 20 start - beginner. Cost is $300, all materials included. DM @understoryartclasses to register :)

Meet David Kaarsemaker from Victoria, BC, a voice contributing to the dynamic conversation of contemporary art in Canada. “My paintings consider my relationship to the myth of “wilderness”: both my sense of reverence in relation to nature as well as my participation in its commodification and exploitation. In the “Monument” series, I explore how my life and the world’s life are deeply intertwined.  When a haze or dusk descends upon me as I am walking in the forest, it descends upon my awareness as well. I honour the specificity of a particular subject, while uniting it with its surroundings within a narrow tonal and chromatic range, and the smooth uniformity of the painted surface.” “Monument 6”   David Kaarsemaker @dkaarse 2025 SSNAP Finalist   27” x 36”   Oil on canvas www.saltspringartprize.ca #saltspringnationalartprize #saltspringisland #canadiancontemporaryart #artprize

Monument 17, oil on canvas, 24” x 32”. Working on this painting got me thinking about David Batchelor’s book, Chromophobia: “Chromophobia manifests itself in the many and varied attempts to purge colour from culture, to devalue colour, to diminish its significance, to deny its complexity. More specifically: this purging of colour is usually accomplished in one of two ways. In the first, colour is made out to be the property of some ‘foreign’ body - usually the feminine, the oriental, the primitive, the infantile, the vulgar, the queer or the pathological. In the second, colour is relegated to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential or the cosmetic. In one, colour is regarded as alien and therefore dangerous; in the other, it is perceived merely as a secondary quality of experience, and thus unworthy of serious consideration. Colour is dangerous, or it is trivial, or it is both. (It is typical of prejudices to conflate the sinister and the superficial.) Either way, colour is routinely excluded from the higher concerns of the Mind. It is other to the higher values of Western culture. Or perhaps culture is other to the higher values of colour. Or colour is the corruption of culture. [...]”

They all needed to get darker

Making some paintings darker, other ones lighter, all of them bluer.