Ottawa Art Association 2009 Awards. Other Media

From Left:

Kerstin Peters, 1st Place for "His Majesty Ringo I"
Joanne Beaubien, Honorable Mention for "Reunion"
Hilde Lambrechts, 3rd Place for "Art and Science"
Absent, Barbara Tindale, 2nd Place for "Picnic"

Talk about Motion: Pine Wrack by Arthur Lismer

This painting reveals a natural world, which as Tennyson once wrote, was "red in tooth in claw". The tangled roots look like the wrack of horns on an elk. And like the horn wrack, the tangle of roots helps this tree to survive, and to hang on against great odds.

Why does that line of red vegetation along the cliff, below the tree, make me think of a bloody red mouth?

The ruggedness of the terrain and the windblown stormy sky is the antitheses of the romanticized idyllic paintings of Canada painted by earlier 19th century artists.

We're deep into the new Survival Canadian mythos in this work. No more family compactism no more Bishop Straughans or Whitby Lady's Colleges, or lawn bowling or lawn crochet parties on a summer Sunday afternoon.


Arthur Lismer, 1933
Pine Wrack
National Gallery of Canada

Cartoon Artist, Ben Wicks' Collection in York U. Archives

The family of the late satirical comic artist, Ben Wicks, donated over 2,500 of his work to York University. Ben died 10 years ago, and is remembered for his appearances on television and for his work in newspapers. Wicks was noted for his lightning drawing skills. According to spiltink.com, the issue was clouded for a time by a legal dispute between Ben's surviving family and the person who found his work in a plastic garbage bag.

The story of this donation in 2009 can be found on the spiltink blog. Please click here.

2010 Olympics - A Visual Delight by Jeff Cable

photo by Jeff Cable

Just when there seemed like nothing left to cheer about with the end of the 2010 Olympics - what should I find but an incredible website produced by professional photographer Jeff Cable, of San Francisco.

Jeff was a certified Olympic photographer and he generously published his works on his blog for everyone to enjoy. Jeff's blog features an incredible collection of pictures of most of the events.

Jeff kindly consented to this blog using one of his pictures. But, the problem was - which one to chose. (I was pretty partial to his curling shots)

I eventually gave up since there were so many sports and so many great pictures. So, the young lady photographed above got the nod.

Please click here to be taken to Jeff's blogsite collection.

Dandelions by Susannah Moodie c 1860

Many genteel Victorian women were accomplished water colour artists, since learning to draw and paint was often part of the middle or upper class upbringing of girls. This was not the case for Thomas Strickland's children, however, who were given a more academic and practical education. In her teens, Susanna persuaded May Ritchie, wife of the Wrentham Congregational Church pastor, to teach her the rudiments of drawing and water colour painting. In return, Susanna volunteered in the Ritchies' school for the children of the village poor.
Throughout her life Susanna turned to water colour painting for both pleasure and profit (see Roughing It in the Bush, chapter 11 and Susanna's letter to Catharine, November 18, 1866). Her subjects were mostly floral and she sometimes included small animals or birds in the composition. Occasionally Susanna sketched small scenes, such as her series of water colour washes of the mines at Marmora. Some of the many pictures she sold to augment her income were painted, not on paper, but on dried maple fungi -- a popular curiosity for late Victorian collectors.

Susanna passed on her painting skill to her daughter Agnes, who made good use of it to illustrate Catharine Parr Traill's books Canadian Wild Flowers and Studies of Plant Life in Canada.


Click here to be taken to the source.

Year 2006. How Did the Big Cities Rate for their Number of Artists?

Here are some interesting numbers.

1. Vancouver ranks first among all Canadian cities for concentratin of artits with 2.4% of its population.
2. Victoria 2.0%
3. Montreal 1.9%
4.North Vancouver 1.8%
5. Toronto 1.6%
6.Verdun, St. John's. 1.3%
7 Sanich. 1.2%
8.New Westminster. 1.2%
10 Richmond, Regina,Waterloo,Ottawa,Quebec City,Halifax. 1.0%

Toronto reported the highest level of earnings for artists with $34,100

Summary

1. The average earnings of artists are very low.
2. A typical artist in Canada earns less than half the typical earnings of all Canadian workers.
3. Artists’ earnings decreased, even before the current recession.
4. There are more female than male artists, yet women artists earn much less than men.
5. Aboriginal and visible minority artists have particularly low earnings.
6. Economic returns to higher education are much lower for artists than for other workers.
7. Many artists are self-employed.
8. There are relatively few opportunities for full-time work in the arts.
9. There has been substantial growth in the number of artists since 1971, but the rate of growth is decreasing.
10. Artists, as a group, are becoming more diverse, older and better educated

Its important to note that the artistic community consistets of actors, crafts artistans, conductors, composers and arrangers,circus performers, puppateers,painters, sculptors and visual artists,writers, producers, directors, and dancers.

Taken by itself...visual artists who earn their living in the arts, are very few in number.

Click here to see source.

Eric Keast's Art Unfolds Before us on You Tube

Please click here to be taken to Eric's blogsite.

Thomas Davies: Early English Military Artist in Canada

by Jim Burant


Thomas Davies

(circa 1737-1 812), a Royal Artillery officer whose first service in Canada began at Halifax in 1757.
"Davies, an important figure in Canadian military history, recorded unique views of the campaigns at Louisbourg and in the St. John River valley during 1758, the campaign against the French forts in the Lake Champlain and Richelieu regions in 1758, and the St. Lawrence River valley campaign against Montreal in 1760.

His watercolour view of Amherst's troops descending the rapids of the St. Lawrence in the 1760 campaign (Figure I) was widely reproduced in print form, since it formed the background to the famous dedicatory portrait of Jeffrey, Lord Amherst, painted by Joshua Reynolds and published in 1765.

It is a moving and extraordinary rendering of the difficulties faced by Amherst during his rugged journey. Davies served in North America throughout his career, including duty in the years of the American Revolution, during which he again drew many views of battles fought against revolutionary troops.

A Davies sketchbook recently acquired by the National Gallery of Canada contains superb views of British military operations around New York, as well as sketches relating to Canada.4 The most interesting of all Davies' work, for the military historian,are sketches now held by the National Archives of Canada showing different types of military formations as well as 'A South View of Crown Point' with the pitched tents of the army's camp laid out before the observer (Figure 2).5."

editor comment:

English officers in training were taught how to paint in watercolours, since these paintings provided valuable pre-photographic records of locations and situations.
So, its important to look at this work, not as the work of an artist, but as a military record. The sailing boat in mid picture is so innoculous that its hardly worth calling it a subject, for in fact it isn't. The overall scene of the campaign is in itself, the subject.

Davies does have some modest compositional skills as seen in his foreground rocks and trees. These give the work darker values and a feeling of distance. And, he has also used trees and landscape contours to surround the central area of his painting.

The documentary nature of the work superscedes it as a work of art. Colours are suppressed and muted with earth tones. But, this is to be expected for it was painted by a military officer who was constrained into using his watercolours to record a military event.

I wonder if this style of painting didn't influence non documentary watercolour artists. Traditional English watercolour painting has, for instance, been characterized by a 'greying down' of bright colours.

note: figure 2.5 can be seen on this link: [PDF]
from:The Military Artist and the Documentary Art Record
Archival Journals, article 12435 by Jim Burant.
Simon Fraser University. [pdf] file

Paul Dorsey on Barker Fairley (cont)

Cathy Edmonton”, undated

“Ought not the painting of humanity … draw ahead of the landscape [and] take priority over it?” he wrote in 1939. “Ought it not do so in any age, and especially in this age of intense human conflict and suffering and innovation? There is everything in the world about us, the world of today, to suggest that the luxury of dwelling on empty landscapes is likely to recede in men’s minds and the urgent human issues to assert themselves with growing force.”
This passage is cited in “Barker Fairley: Portraits”, a bound collection he released with art critic Gary Michael Dault in 1981, half a decade before he died 22 years ago this past October, in his 100th year.

The Group of Seven connection easily survives him. Fairley’s works are displayed alongside theirs at the McMichael Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario, and in 2004 the Canadian Conservation Institute announced joyously that it had acquired his old paintbox, along with that of the Group’s AY Jackson. Jackson and Fairley had enjoyed several canoe trips together, the classic Group of Seven painting excursion.

The oil-caked wooden boxes had been the keepsakes of Naomi Jackson Groves, AY’s niece, until she died, when the auctioneer got them. They were being raffled off with Jackson’s record player, briefcase, sleeping bag and folding cot.

Though it was at the time awaiting a scientific “analysis of the paints”, the institute reckoned that AY must have used them while he was living in Ottawa in the mid-1960s, prior to a stroke necessitating his retirement to McMichael, which is where I got to meet him on a high-school field trip (as recounted in this post).




How Barker Fairley came to be at House Sol in Georgetown, Ontario, is a facinating story well told by John Sommer in an article he wrote in 1993. He’s shared it with me for the retelling.

Sommer says he learned about Fairley’s art in late 1968 or early ‘69 from Erindale College lecturer Alan Powell, who had agreed to pose for a painting at Fairley’s home in Toronto, at 90 Willcocks Street. Sommer visited the artist there soon after and says he “had the surprise of my life”.


“I discovered shortly after he started that the chair he was sitting on came close to breaking apart whenever he moved with it forward or backward, as he was in the habit of doing during portrait sessions. I braced myself to come to his rescue, to catch him before he would collapse with the chair, if ever it should come to that …

“In his book ‘Portraits’ he is giving this story a rather neat and flattering twist: ‘It will be apparent from my portrait of him, with his right arm grasping the back of the chair he was sitting in as if he couldn’t stay seated any longer — a position he dropped into after I had started — that he is a man of immense energy and enthusiasm.’

On his first visit to Fairley’s home and studio, Sommer asked to host an exhibition at House Sol and Barker “performed a quick little two-step (a mannerism all his own), he was so happy about my offer”.

The show was held from October 18 to November 6, 1969, and only afterward did Sommer learn of Fairley’s lofty stature as a scholar of German literature.

Still, he was puzzled that Fairley had been painting for 37 years and only one large gallery, in Munich, and a small one in Toronto, had shown any interest.

“I guess that his reputation as a literary scholar made people think of his paintings as the products of a hobby-painter. And his artless style wasn’t fancy enough for dealers and critics.”

Fairley exhibited in Georgetown four more times through the 1970s, on one occasion bringing the painting reproduced below, his just-finished portrait of Robertson Davies, one of Canada’s most distinguished authors. It too now belongs to University College, Toronto.



to be continued:
Appreciation to Paul Dorsey, for this exerpt from his blog. Click here to be taken to The Dali House.

Paul Dorsey on Artist Barker Fairley

Barker Fairley by AY Jackson. 1920


AY Jackson by Barker Fairley, 1939

"I remember seeing an exhibition of paintings by Barker Fairley some 30 years ago and being positively unimpressed. They were a bleak, washed-out lot. Renewing contact recently with John and Gisela Sommer, at whose Gallery House Sol in smalltown Canada the show was held, prompted me to have another look.
And now I think I see the point."


Francis Sparshot, U of T, Associate Professor. Author of Structure of Aesthetics,
by Barker Fairley.1957.

"There’s something quite moving in the gaunt portraits and sparse landscapes, particularly the latter. Rather than washed-out, the scenes now seem blindingly bright to me. I wonder, too, if he was consciously stripping away the utensils of the scenery so that we could see the countryside fundamentally naked."


Dale Fields by Barker Fairley

“People keep asking me if painting is hard work,” he once said. “Painting isn’t work. Painting is making decisions. I make decisions, nothing more.”

There’s an interesting political sidebar to Fairley’s career as well: he and his first wife Margaret Adele were once ridden out of the USA on a rail, their reputations tarred and the Canadian government in no mood to help them remove the feathers.

Fairley, who was born a headmaster’s son in Britain in 1887 — in Barnsley, Yorkshire, in fact, just down the road from my hatchling nest in Lancashire — but who spent most of his life in Canada, was far better known in his time as one of the world’s foremost authorities on German literary beacons like Goethe. He was an academic through and through, a literary and art critic, author of many books, and only then, it seems, a painter.

It was well after he brought his scholarship to the German department at the University of Toronto that Fairley was prodded to take up a brush by one of his former students, Robert Finch, himself a painter as well as a poet.

He couldn’t have needed too much encouragement. By then he’d encountered all of the Group of Seven, though he’d missed out on Tom Thomson, their spiritual heart.

“I knew them all,” he told an interviewer. “I met Jimmie [JEH] MacDonald in the fall of 1917. I never met Tom Thomson, he had died a few months before.”

Fairley began by rendering landscapes in watercolour but, lamenting that “Canada has no tradition of portraits, no tradition of freely painted faces”, soon switched to the human physiognomy in oil (without ever abandoning landscapes)."

To be continued:
With appreciation to Paul Dorsey's Dali House.
Please click here to view Paul's Blogsite.

Tony Batten and the Old Ursiline Convent of Three Rivers

This is a classic painting, both in traditional style, and in recording our history and culture as a country. Its earth tones, its subdued colouring, and Tony's careful attention to details make it the kind of work that should be shipped directly to the National Gallery of Canada.

Please click here to be taken to Tony's website.

The last Huzzah - Vancouver Olympiad, 2010 in retrospect

Stan Douglas’ Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971 at the Woodward’s building in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside during the 2010 Olympics / photo Danielle Egan

To view the above picture, along with its accompanying article 'Vancouver Report: The Remains of the Olympiad' from the Canadianart.com, website, please click here.

Eric Keast an Eclectic Artist

Eric C. Keast is a self taught contemporary artist combining various media: Painting, papier-mache,beadwork, writing, etc.. He has been documenting his work -online- in photographs and video since returning to Canada, after ten years in Minneapolis, where he studied and worked with Anurag Art Bronze |Studio and Foundry, Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre's MayDay parade and festival, Two Rivers Gallery at MPLS American Indian Centre and Ain Dah Yung Youth Shelter.

In the 1980's and 1990's, Eric studied the rock art forms of the Canadian Shield, pictographs and petroglyphs,and prehistoric material culture, while working for the Regional Archaeology unit and the Ontario Rock Art Conservation Association in Kenora, ON.

While not a strict follower of the Woodlands School / "X-ray" forms of representation, Eric's work is influenced by the source material and strong lines of Woodlands art.

Eric received an Ontario Arts Council "Northern Arts" grant this winter, which will be used to: a) create a mural wall / theatrical space infrastructure at SpiritFire Park in Devlin, ON

b) sculpt a large foam/clay sturgeon model, create and install a papier mache copy of the Sturgeon Mother at SpiritFire Park

c) Lead a mural design/installation workshop with the UMAYC program, from the Fort Frances UNFC

d) Hold a grand opening event in August 2010, presenting a theatrical performance in new space and host performance by T-Bay's Rodney Brown.

Eric is a member of the Ojibway nation. He is an eclectic artist whose works
includes: rawhide rattles, acrylic paintings, wood sculpture, papier mache masks, beadwork, leatherwork, 'First Nations', art, and 'Native Art'.

Please click here to visit Eric's website.

The Moona Lisa by Alex Fong

20x30 watercolour

This whimsical picture by Alex Fong, brings with it a satirical rendering of the works of different artists. How many can you recognize? Click here to see other works on Alex's website.

While on the Topic of Iconic Art

Gabor Szilasi: Snowstorm in Montreal,1971
National Gallery of Canada

"Gabor Szilasi is a documentary photographer renowned for his humanitarian vision. His fascination with daily life has led him to search for images that show the traces of man’s presence - be it photos of people, interiors, vernacular architecture and urban landscapes.
Largely self-taught, Gabor Szilasi started to photograph in Hungary in 1952 when he purchased his first camera- a Zorkij. In 1956 he documented the Hungarian Revolution in Budapest and shortly afterwards fled the country, eventually immigrating to Canada in 1957."

Excerpt from Cybermuse Gallery.Ca. Please click here.

COLLECTIONS

Air Canada
Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa, Ontario
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec, Montréal, Québec
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, Québec
Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa, Ontario
Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta
Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec
Fotografiska Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
McCord Museum, Montréal, Québec
Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Montréal, Québec
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Montréal, Québec
Musée du Québec, Québec, Québec
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Collection from Concordia U.Please click here.

Click here for the link to the National Gallery of Canada/Cybermuse site

Biography of the late Ben Wicks - Celebrity Comic Artist

"I was bloody hopeless at school," he recalled. "Left at 14 and they were as pleased to see me go as I was."

Ben Wicks was cockney born and he never lost his accent.
He had 43 books of his art published.
He received The Order of Canada.
His comic strip 'The Outcasts' appeared each day in 184 newspapers across Canada and the USA.

Ben's picture was extracted from The Regional Maple Leaf.com.
You can read his interesting biography by clicking here.

A Sculptured Monument to Hockey - Sure Why Not?

Sculptor Tim Schmaltz thinks its time we have a monument to hockey. At least he did back in 2008. I guess the largest hockey stick in the world (Canadian kitsch, right column) doesn't count.

Where will it all end?

When I was a kid, we used to gather around the family crocinole board at night. How about a monument to crocinole...the sport that kept Canadian families together? Or, can you imagine a statue celebrating rugby in Canada with a pile of bodies and a ball sitting on top? Maybe Molsons might even throw in a statue to their iconic beverage?

Imagination can take us wherever we want to go on this one. Anyway, after having seen Canada defeat the USA in Olympic hockey for a gold last night, I'm in the mood for celebration. If Tim appeared at my door today asking for a donation, I might consider taking out a mortgage on my house.

Thanks again to the CBC for keeping up posted with another good blog entry and for the picture which I lifted. Please click here to be taken to the story.

And, while you are at it - why not check Tim's website out by clicking here.

Disclaimer: The Frederick Artwork Blog doesn't recommend mortgaging your house to support Tim's monument. (Well..I had to add this, the world is big and there is always somebody out there who is easily influenced)

Welcome to the World of Barry Atkinson

There is a special place in my heart for the animation artists who work behind the scenes to create films such as The Lion King. These artists are for the most part are unknown but yet their works thrill the imaginations of both children and adults alike.

Barry Atkinson, is one such artist. He has worked for The Walt Disney Studios, Dreamworks, and Don Bluth as an animating artist.

Barry grew up in an artistic environment.He was born in Ottawa and is the son of artist Vic Atkinson, whose work also appears on this blog. (check the list of artists in the right column).

Barry launched out into an art career at the age of 20 and his journey has taken him from being a background designer to being an artistic director.

His brush was engaged in the production of The Lion King, Prince of Egypt, an American Tail, and Fantasia.

Take a look at the picture at the top of this posting. It is so typical of Barry's work. Barry is noted for his ability to effectively manage soft light, vibrant colours and powerful designs. He works in acrylics, gouache and oils. And his Japanese Garden paintigs works are mysterious, spiritual, and sublimely peaceful.


You are invited to check out Barry's blog by clicking here.

We Want Turner Back! Legal fight goes to Court

Beaverbrook heir wants Freud and Turner back!

Are you ready for this? When is a gift bequeathment not a gift bequeathment?
Not when it is a Turner Painting given to New Brunswick's Beaverbrook Gallery, by the late Lord, himself.

Its reported that Max Aitken, moved to the UK where he gained his peerage - and bought himself a mansion, and he acquired along the way, grandchildren who today want the two most valuable paintings back. The old family mansion is said to cost a fortune to repair, and times are tough nowadays, and the gallery has about $200 million dollars hanging on their walls out there in one of the colonies. Get the story?

The fun begins today, with an open court session in which both sides will trot out their paperwork to determine who gets to keep the collection. The Beaverbrooks have already gone down this road before and the courts settled on the collection staying where it is - in the gallery. But, times have changed and $200 million is a lot of change.

I know of one man who went to court, with his wife pushing him in a wheelchair, and him hoping for a softening of a judicial heart. I wonder if the descendents will appear with runs in stockings, and their elbows poking out of their Harris Tweet jackets?

They've got their eyes set on the two big ones, Fountain of Indolence, by JW Turner, and Hotel Bedroom, by Lucien Freud.

Beaverbrook's descendents have had a habit of taking the Lord's paintings out of the gallery, on loan, then selling them off.

The gallery's documents showing their legal entitlement to the paintings were earned for them a decision in court the first time around. Story has it that over the years, Beaverbrook's descendents have bullied the gallery management into signing documents which claim that the paintings were lenders and not keepers.

Please click here to be taken to the source of this content,Canada.com.

Another source. The brunswickian. Click here.

Ghost Artist Tony Batten of Toronto, paints for Avril Lavigne.

Please click here to be taken to Tony's site.