Inner Places

de King, James

David Milne (1882-1953) dedicated his life to exploring nature and casting it into art in a variety of modernist formats. He was born in poverty in rural Ontario and remained poor all his life because of his relentless dedication to his art. For him, art was life. Nothing mattered to him as much as the enormous kick he felt when he was able to produce the image his artist's eye told him was there. Milne returned to Ontario in 1929 after a twenty-five-year stay in the U.S. In every place he lived his peripatetic existence, he created a different kind of landscape painting. In his chosen life of solitude, his mind and hand remained very much alive. Since Milne spent as much time writing as he did painting, he provides an enormous amount of material for a life writer. His biography recreates the texture of the artist's one-of-a-kind life and struggles, and allows a truly intimate portrait to emerge.