A David Rifat Timeline

For the history buff, I'll take a short walk down the David Rifat memory lane...

My art career started at the Edinburgh College of Art in the 1950s, where I won the Andrew Grant Graduate Scholarship (1957) and the Andrew Grant and the Andrew Carnegie Post-graduate Travelling Scholarships (1959) - allowing me to take my young family to Italy and Greece for 18 months of research.

Back in the U.K., I devoted myself to art, teaching and admin at Middlesborough College of Art, Leeds University Extension Department at Middlesborough, and then quickly [yes, from the Tyne to the Tees] made Head of Department at Carlisle College of Art, from which I was recruited to UCSD at Muir College in La Jolla, California.

The 60s were filled with creative halcyon days, large anti-war oils and recreational sex, drugs and rock & roll.

Offered a Commission in the U.S.Army complete with a field trip to Viet Nam, I elected to shift to the University of Toronto Department of Fine Art and Archeology in 1969.

U of T remained my academic home until I retired in 2002, and was conferred the title Professor Emeritus.

From 2002 to the present, I have been happily ensconced in Victoria, B.C. - home of flower beds, newly weds, and nearly deads - where I would rest, save that my ladywife pressures me to continue drawing...

Thus, the Couch Gallery Exhibition in 2015. 

But first up are some early paintings - student work from the 1950s.

And there are paintings and drawings and even an installation...

And there continue to be "new works on paper".

I hope you will enjoy this online art gallery.