Tom Thompson

West Wind.

Picture Source: http://artchive.com/artchive/G/groupseven/thomson_west_wind.jpg.html

Quote from You Tube Video:
"Thompson was like the worst artist when he began. He was really bad."...."His maturity just last three years."

An intriquing You Tube video on artist Tom Thompson. This video could not be exported and can only be seen directly from this You Tube page. Please click here.

Virtual Museum of Canada - Emily Carr

Tina Picard shoots and scores

Tina Picard


Tina Picard is radidly making her presence known in the Canadian Visual Arts scene.
Tina is an Ottawa based photographer, who specializes in fashion, portrait, family and wedding photography. Then when she has some free time she turns her lens loose and connects with some great photo landscape works as well.

Tina writes:
The haunted houses

I took the four first photos near Bathurst, New Brunswick. The house that we see in the pictures has been abandonned for a while, and the weather outside seemed to be perfect for a spooky-dark photo shoot. I went there with my friend Jimmy who served as a model at the same time. Another picture of this series was taken at another location, it was at another abandoned house in Madawaska, Maine. That house wasn't that old, and it was actually surprising to see that it was abandoned since it was a huge house and people that lived there must have had a lot of money. The last set of pictures were taken at an abandoned house in Ste-Anne-de-Madawaska, New Brunswick. I absolutely love those kind of photo shoots, and try to work on some whenever I have free time. Here are a few pictures I got from those three photo shoots:

Look for the other pictures in this set to appear from time to time on the blog, or if you are eager click here to be taken to her blog where they can be found.

Polar Bear by Jimmy Peetooloosie

Jimmy Petooloosie
The young artist resides in the community of Cape Dorset,
a small but important settlement on the south coast of
Baffin Island.

His father, Joanassie and his brother Noah are prominent
carvers. Joanassie encouraged his sons to carve and
make extra money from their work, and he permitted them
to assist him on their early efforts.

Jimmy Peetooloosie speaks both his native language of
Inkutitut and English. He enjoys both his life in Cape
Dorset and particularly life on the land, where each
member of the family has their own favorite summer camp.

This artist is known for his depictions of wildlife,
particularly the polar Bear.

text from: Inuitartzone.com

On the hand of the artist.

I found this online and took a minute to look at it and thought of the charcoal portraits I have at home. They were created by travelling portrait artists before the age of photography. I cannot pass them by without looking admiring the subtleties which they capture and I see a beauty in them that surpasses photography.

Am I showing my personal biases? Yes, I suppose so. And, I apologize to the photograpahic artists who read my blog.

I have enormous respect and appreciation for the works of Yousef Karsh, who I have featured on the blog. Most certainly - he was a supreme artist with a lens.

But yet....I am drawn like a moth to my small collection of charcoal portraits. They haunt me and give me a sense of immediacy both with the artist who drew them and to the subject they portrayed.

The Beauty of Newfoundland, from Rolf Hicker's Canadian Album

Rolf was born in Freising in Southern Bavaria, Germany and has been passionate about photography since his childhood. He became a full time professional photographer once he turned 18. Don't miss to visit rolf's german website: Rolf's Tier- und Naturfotografie.

He travels the world over photographing in remote locations where he captures dramatic impressions of nature, breathtaking scenery, and sensational animal pictures. He is frequently commissioned by governments seeking to increase travel and interest in their countries and has filmed and photographed in North America, South America, Galapagos, Africa, Europe, New Zealand and Asia.

He specializes in North America and has spent more than seven years following the seasons capturing images in Canada, Alaska, and in the USA before moving to British Columbia, Canada




"I'se the b'y that builds the boat
And I'se the b'y that sails her
I's the b'y that catches the fish,
And takes them home to Lizer.

Hip your partner Sally Tibbo
Hip your partner Sally Brown
Fogo, Twillingate, Morton's Harbour,
All around the circle."

"Newfoundland Folk Song, I'se the B'y"

Thanks to Rolf Hicker for this beautiful photograph from near Twillingate, Newfoundland. Please click here to see Rolf's collection of Canadian works.

Mystery on the Lunenburg Anglican Church Ceiling

Parishioners at one of Canada's oldest Anglican churches will be puzzled by an enduring enigma when they gaze heavenward this Christmas.

The chancel ceiling at St. John's Anglican Church in Lunenburg, N.S., has a special pattern of gilded stars on it, and while locals now know what it represents, they have yet to find out who originally designed it, or how.

The conundrum emerged after the church, built in 1754, burned on Halloween night in 2001 as a result of arson. The parish sought to reconstruct the building's interior as closely as possible, and it brought in parishioner Margaret Coolen in 2004 to re-create the ceiling over the altar.

But the church didn't have a complete set of photographs of the original star pattern, so Coolen, hoping the pattern reflected the actual alignment of heavenly bodies in the night sky, sought the help of astronomer David Turner of Saint Mary's University in Halifax.

That's when the first mystery emerged.

Turner recognized the constellation Perseus in the photos of the eastern part of the chancel ceiling. But Perseus, seen from Lunenburg, always lies in the northern part of the sky and never due east.

"We looked at them and didn't recognize any of the star groups," Coolen explained of the constellations' positions. "It looked like they might just simply be put up at random, but it didn't seem like someone would go to that trouble to put just random stars on the ceiling."

Coolen suggested that Turner instead look at the stars' alignment around 2,000 years ago — on Christmas Eve in the year of Jesus' birth.

Then, using software that plots the positions of heavenly bodies throughout history, Turner had a revelation: The chancel ceiling's pattern indeed reflected quite closely how the night sky would have looked from Lunenburg all those years past, when constellations appeared in somewhat different locations than today.

"I set the scene for sunset, and bingo! I found myself looking at Perseus in the eastern sky," he said.

But while the finding has excited parishioners at St. John's Anglican, who now know that they are gazing up at the heavens as they would have appeared on the eve of their Saviour's birth, it has also perplexed them.

The ornamentation they once merely called "Mariner's Sky" holds a stellar motif of immense astronomical significance. But who could possibly have calculated the astral positions, and how, remains a mystery.

Extracted from the CBC News website. Dec. 24, 2009. Click here.

Our National Parliament Buildings - a treasure in sculpturing, and carving.

For those Canadians fortunate enough to tour our Parliament buildings in Ottawa, it is a visual delight for those interested in carvings in both wood and stone, and in viewing elegant portraits of former prime ministers.

This featured sculpture is of a young Queen Victoria and was sculpted by Marshall Wood in 1871.

Parliament gained a permanent home after Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as the capital in 1857. The Library building, designed in the High Victorian Gothic Revival style by Thomas Fuller and Chilion Jones, opened in 1876. Its circular shape and the use of galleries and alcoves were the inspiration of the first Parliamentary Librarian, Alpheus Todd. He recommended that the building be “spacious and lofty” and wisely advised that it be separated from the Centre Block by a corridor to protect it from fire.

The information for this posting came from the Government of Canada website. Please click here.

Please click, Public Art in Montreal, here.

Vic Atkinson - An Artist of many Talents

Bridge to the City. Scheduled to appear on the January cover of the Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine.

Vic Atkinson

Vic Atkinson brings to his personal life palette a rich variety of life experiences.
His background has been in animated film with some set design, live
action and commercial art as well as serious painting. Vic paints in acrylics and oils, and does some egg tempera work as well.

Vic was born in London England, and he attended the notable Camberwell School of Fine Art. He later emigrated to Canada, where he presently lives in a small town near Ottawa, Ontario.

Vic had his own animation production company for ten years and produced many half-hour award winning television specials. He also produced a 25 minute
segment for the Columbia Pictures film "Heavy Metal", which is now
a cult classic.

It is interesting to note that Vic worked with Bill Mason on an animated series for Crawley Films, called the 'Wizard of Oz'. Bill was a respected film maker and was featured in the Friday, Dec. 4th, 2009 issue of this blog.

Vic's works are represented by Artrax Gallery in Port Credit, Ontario.

Please click here to visit Vic's personal website and to see his rich portfolio.





Vic's works can be viewed by clicking here.

Alex Colville and the Art of careful Planning

The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia has an interesting item on Alex Colville.

Click here and you will be taken to an interactive web page which juxtapositions a planning sketch over top of his painting, 'Oceans Unlimited'.

Did AY Jackson's 'The Red Maple' influence the creation of the Canadian Flag?

A River, some rocks and a small tree with red leaves. Did this painting, have a profound influence upon the selection of the Red Maple Leaf for the Canadian flag?

When the late Prime Minister Lester Pearson, sought public input into ideas for the flag which would represent our country, George Stanely, submitted a single maple leaf, drawn in red ink.

Stanley wrote that the single maple leaf, "suggests the idea of loyalty to a single country".

But the power of the brush is mighty and when AY Jackson set down his brush and signed his work off, did he create an iconic symbol which would influence the hand that drew the red ink maple leaf that became our flag?

Of course not?

click here to read George Stanely's obituary in the Ottawa Citizen.

More on Totems

Cinda Chavich

TERRACE, B.C. —
Published on Friday, Jan. 29, 2010 5:11PM EST

Last updated on Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010 3:46AM EST


"It's dark and drizzling when I finally reach the village of Gitanyow, but the dull weather can't blunt the striking scene before me. Here, alongside the muddy main road, stand more than 20 weathered totem poles, the carved crests and lineage of families who have lived here for centuries. While it's impressive to see these stark sentinels in any setting – whether in a museum, art gallery or urban park – the chance to view the poles in situ, in the First Nations community where they belong, is both wonderful and humbling.

And in this isolated Gitksan village, in northern British Columbia, I'm among some of the oldest standing poles in the world.

“This one is from 1760, this 1880, and 1910,” says hereditary chief and local museum curator Deborah Good, as we walk among the remains of the weathered wooden figures, many which had been left to rot on the ground before this small museum was opened in 2008"..............

From the Globe and Mail, January 29.2010
Please click here to read the complete article

Nostalgia at its best.

As a guy, I like this.

I have to confess that I no longer "lather up", but I did so for years and loved it.
There was something decidedly masculine about it. And, don't be confused about it having anything to do with being on some kind of quest for the 'perfect shave.' No way. It was pure ritual, all the way, with every hot frothy rub of the brush.

It would take me back to those summer holidays at the cottage.

I had vivid memories of my dad, stripped to his waist, or wearing one of those vest style undershirts with those little hooked straps over his shoulders, and with his braces hanging down, looped from his waist, and with his face lathered, as he stood looking at a mirror hanging from a tree, engaging in a ritual as old as the many generations of the men of my family in Canada.

Most certainly, the 'real men' of my family wouldn't be caught dead making toilette in an indoor washroom. For one thing, such a thing didn't exist in their early log shanty homes.

And heavens forbid, none of my ancestral males, would grind their stubble with some kind of modern electric thingy, let alone put perfumed water on their faces.

Shaving like this was seasonal - when a man would blow the stink of house off his skin, and stand half stripped outside, and take his water from a hot basin and lather up with brush and mug and shave with the scent of cedar in the air. And then, when finished, the soapy water would arc into the air, and he would walk over to the hand pump and complete his ritual with bracing handfulls of cold, clean, water.

And it all came back when I chanced upon Sara Bonnyman's website, and discovered her 'moss scuttles'. Sara touched base with something which seems to have been lost with the passage of time.

Click here to see Sara's other fine works of pottery and of course, her shaving scuttles.

William Armstrong's Secret Signature

Artists have been known to sign their works in many different ways, but William Armstrong might claim the most unusual signature.

Armstrong was comissioned to produce a large watercolour painting of Toronto's old city hall. The painting was commissioned to generate interest in the building project.

Armstrong didn't scrawl his name across the bottom of his painting. In fact, you would have to look hard to discover who exactly did paint it. But the clue is there to be found. A close observation reveals in the bottom left corner, a figure carrying a sandwich board with Armstrong's initials.

This is almost as bizarre as the way EJ Lennox left his name on the building. But, thats a story for another blog entry on another day.

Source: City of Toronto website

Architecture: Royal Ontario Museum Addition - The Worst of Architectural Designs?

The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. Sure, there were a lot of Wal-Marts thrown up in the Aughts, but Daniel Libeskind's addition to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto surpasses the ugliness of bland functional buildings by being both ugly and useless. His aluminum-and-glass-clad crystalline forms grow out of the building's original 1914 structure, and from the street it's dramatic. But go inside and you need a map to move around its irrational and baffling dead spaces.

And where do you put art in a room of canted walls? Curators seem as baffled and frustrated by it as casual visitors. And it cost only $250 million.

Please click here to see the Washington Post Article.


Toronto Mayor Miller says:
"The Crystal's interesting," he said. "I think it will be interesting to hear people's opinions. There's going to be strong opinions on both sides."

CBC article says opinions on the architecture are divided. Click here

Kenneth Gordon, Hay Stacks

It seems easy to be an impressionistic landscape painter. Nature lends itself to being interpreted by artists on their own terms. But, its quite a different story when it comes to painting the human landscape. You can only bend, buildings, and streets so much before distortion creates visual discordance.

In Haystacks, we find Kenneth Gordon taking a commonplace country scene and using its basic elements to his advantage.

Look at the one, elongated, lower cloud that crosses the canvas. It's gently bent,indeed, almost rounded, as it points towards the horizon.

The woodlot on the right, moves relentlessly up the field, in the same direction as the shorn rows of wheat on the left. And if you look carefully, the line of trees is narrow, so narrow in fact, that it looks almost like a moving column of trees. And, his subject, the hay stacks are contained in the middle zone and this creates a sense of everything relentlessly forward.

Gordon furthers this sense of movement with his shorn rows on the left side of his work, undulating in gently curving lines, and his hay stacks appear to be gently contoured and shaped by the wind.

Its these little things which turn an ordinary scene into an extraordinary painting.

Bridge to Solitude by Barry Atkinson

Bridge to Solitude, by Barry Atkinson teases my imagination. Its one of six paintings in his Japanese garden set.

I find that many traditional Asian artworks hang in a land suspended by the notes of an Eastern musical instrument. They exist. They say little. They are caught in a place where time is suspended.

Bridge to Solitiude as has lot to say in a gentle way, and it says it well. There is a visual pathway, up the tree trunk, over the bridge, up the waterfalls towards the moonlight. This is a subdued place, where mood is created by misty diffused light. The scene emerges out of mist. Is there something beyond the mountain? Who really cares? Maybe there's nothing. It's all so mystical.

But yet, the hand of man is all over it.

This is a cultured, refined and manicured world. This is a world of control and design. It doesn't just happen. The tree has no surplus branches - there are no twiggy bits that don't belong. There is no chaos. No ramdom pieces that tear your clothes or scratch your skin. Even the rocks which peer down on the garden below are softened by moss.

It's all so graceful for this is a world of soft, rounded contours. It's a world of peace. And, it's a world where you hang somewhere in a controlled, meditative suspension.

There is no violence in this world. No sound of stumbling feet, No sounds period. There are no people.

This is a world of misty blue. Blue is said to be the oriental colour of spirituality. Light plays its magic with blue notes.

I like the interconnectiveness of light in this work. The, moonlight, the bridge, the pathway and the touches of light which sparkle on the tops of plants. It's a place where you would expect, twinkling, dancing spirits.

It looks like our world, but it's so designed that it gives the viewer a sense of profound peace and timelessness - as if the artist, has had a vision of some place - eternal. A place prepared for us. A mystical Shangrila - where you can sit forever in the lotus position and contemplate the divine.

While it would seem complete to end my critiquing here, there is something more to it than meditative otherworldliness. The perfect roundness of the bushes, give it an ethereal, almost cinematic quality. But then again, that's what we should expect from Barry - for his personal life story is rich with his work with Disney and with the film arts.

Nicely painted Barry.

Look for Barry's personal story and other works in a not too distant blog entry.

Benjamin's Dream, sung by Don Charbonneau: A song of the life of native artist, Benjamin Che Che

Le Refus Global: Continuation of blogs on Quebec's Artistic Revolution

To hear this CBC archival entry about the creation of The Automatistes in Montreal, please click here. The radio documentary is about 5 minutes in length.

Zoltan Szabo - Watercolourist Supreme: 1928-2003

Canada can lay claim to having been the home of the reknown watercolourist, Zoltan Szabo, but then again both Hungary and the United States share equal claim.

Szabo, you see, was born in Hungary. He fled his communist homeland, and emigrated to Canada where he lived for 30 years before moving to the United States in the 1970's.

Zoltan Szabo made a huge impact upon beginning artists with his 10 instructional watercolour painting books, and his many workshops.

Szabo was noted for his simple, direct paintings and his advanced understanding of how to maximize the power of colour.


"Painting with the minimum number of colors to achieve maximum result is a sign of sophistication and compositional discipline."

"Contrasting color temperatures are as important as value contrasts."

"Complementary hues lose their color identity when mixed in optically equal combination. I try to select one color which is light in value and another which can go dark if I need it to."

"Allow one color, or just a couple of analogous colors, to dominate the mood of the painting; and let the others fulfil a supporting role."

Please click here to open the quotation source: Robert Genn's 'Painter's Keys.',.