catalogue excerpts
& didactics
Excerpt. Paterson Ewen, Works on Paper, 1949-1992 (Art Gallery of Hamilton, 1992).
With little money on which to live or purchase art supplies, Ewen began to question the commitment of his Toronto dealer, the Dunkelman Gallery. In a letter to gallery owner Ben Dunkelman dated May 6, 1969, the artist demanded that the gallery terminate his contract and return all of his artwork.[1] In a straightforward response, Dunkelman informed Ewen that he would indeed release the artwork but only after the artist had reimbursed the gallery $1,313.63 for “shipping, framing, advertising and other advances.”[2] Having backed himself into a corner, Ewen was forced to sell artworks from his collection. Frustrated, the artist continued to lash out against the market, the system, the underpinnings of minimalist painting. He spoke at the opening of a retrospective exhibition of his work at the 20/20 Gallery in January, 1970. His views were recorded during a panel discussion: Because of the persons who have bought my paintings, I have determined never to paint another canvas… I don’t know what I’ll do. But I’m determined it won’t be this sort of thing.[3] “As objects my paintings fit into a category which I reject," he declared.”[4] To Ewen, it seemed “that no matter how hard you try to free yourself you will become elitist anyway.” Having reached an impasse in his paintings and feeling deeply dissatisfied with the rules of non-figurative modern art, Ewen decided to give up “brushes and everything else”: I really felt like playing instead and I thought I was making an anti-art gesture in the formal sense with those last paintings. Daubing rows of dots on plain canvas with felt. But then somehow this turned out feeling like traces of things moving through space and this is what first suggested the idea of phenomena…[5] These now renowned breakthrough paintings including Traces Through Space (1970, destroyed) were followed by a group of works on paper titled, Rain Hit By Wind (1970) (cat. no. 17, illus.). In these black on white paintings, Ewen dashed a brush loaded with Japanese ink across sheets of paper. Unlike his figurative works of the 1950’s, these paintings cannot be called modernist… [1] Dunkelman Gallery Archives, MG 28 III 110 Vol. 2, Public Archives of Canada. [2] Dunkelman Gallery Archives. Ewen took a teaching position at H.B. Beal Secondary School in the fall, 1969, and was able to pay back some of his debt. The Dunkelman Gallery kept only one painting. [3] Ewen in Lenore Crawford, “Ewen Art Works Lauded,” London Free Press (Jan. 7, 1970). [4] Ewen in “Robert Millet, Paterson Ewen, Barry Lord, Royden Rabinowitch, Greg Curnoe, etc., Jan. 6, 1970, 20/20 Gallery, King St., London, Ont.”, tape recording. [5] Ewen in Nick Johnson, “Paterson Ewen, Rain,” Artscanada, No. 196/197 (March, 1975) p. 41. |
Excerpt. Sylvain Louis-Seize, Resolution (Oeno Gallery, 2020).
Sylvain Louis-Seize has painted since he could hold a brush -- growing up in a rough north Montreal neighbourhood he painted on purloined construction scraps using leftover house paint from neighbours. When success came ultimately and suddenly in 2005, he left his construction job of 18 years and rode a wave that allowed him to paint full time. Exhibitions of his rich landscapes derived from an active imagination sold out to eager collectors. Then just as suddenly, in 2017, Louis-Seize put down his brush -- painting having been as much a therapy for him as a livelihood, he sought a new direction in his artwork. Now in 2019, after a 2 year hiatus, Louis-Seize has returned to painting in a bold reinvention. Through the medium he has explored his entire life, the artist has resolved memories of a difficult past and seized the present. Things could have turned out quite differently for him – raised by a single mother in difficult circumstances, he saw many of his friends end up in street gangs. |
artwork didactics
Conceived in 1987, this bronze female figure, 11.5 inches high, by British sculptor Lynn Chadwick (1914-1988) was cast by Pangolin Editions in an edition of 9. It is stamped with the artist's monogram. The elegant figure has a rich black patina and polished face.
Chadwick, one of the leading sculptors of post-war Britain, trained initially as a draughtsman and worked in an architectural firm. After the war, during which he served as a pilot, Chadwick made a living producing exhibition stands and designs for textiles and furniture. During this creative phase, he constructed the first of his now famous and popular mobiles. In the late 1940s, Chadwick received a flood of commissions for these kinetic artworks from architects, private businesses and the Arts Council of Great Britain. Having broken with the tradition of carving sculpture from wood or stone, Chadwick went on to welded iron, steel and bronze rods into expressionistic, abstracted sculptures. In these works, inspired by the human form, insects and animals, Chadwick honed a unique modernist style. He would later produce editioned works cast in bronze. Chadwick's sculptures reflect a post-war aesthetic that was described by critic Herbert Read in the 1952 Venice Biennale catalogue New Aspects of British Sculpture. Against a backdrop of the Cold War, Read drew on passages from T. S. Eliot's epic poem, The Waste Land, to describe Chadwick's work: "Here are images of flight, of ragged claws 'scuttling across the floors of silent seas'..." Chadwick was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire, French Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and Royal Academician. His works are held in major institutions including the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Tate Gallery, the Albright Knox Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Israel Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and many more. |
Hints of red and orange beneath blue tinted snow echo in the treed banks of a wintry river in this oil by Robert Pilot. Capped by a bright blue sky, the Pond at Ste Agathe, Quebec, was a scene favoured by the artist who painted it many times.
Robert W. Pilot, MBE, RCA, (b. Nfld, 1898-1967) was a painter and etcher schooled in European modernist traditions filtered through a Canadian sensibility. As a child, Pilot assisted his step father painter Maurice Cullen in his Montreal studio, and the two would take sketching trips together. Pilot is today known for his inspired, glowing landscapes of the Lower St. Lawrence region, and the shores of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Pilot is also recognized for his dramatic scenes of the snow-covered Rockies. Pilot's style is at once modern with bold lines and bright colours yet anchored in traditional layered or zig-zag formal compositions. His work reveals the influence of Cullen as well as members of the au courant Group of Seven including A.Y. Jackson with whom Pilot painted. Remarkably, while Pilot exhibited with the Group of Seven in 1920 they did not formalize their relationship. Instead, Pilot chose to pursue studies at the Académie Julian (1920-22) in Paris. In 1922, he exhibited at the famed Paris Salon. Returning subsequently to Montréal, he continued to sketch with Cullen and took an active role in the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts being elected associate in 1925. Pilot served in both World Wars. As a Captain in the Black Watch he saw action at Dieppe in 1942. Pilot was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire. Returning to Montreal in 1945, the artist resumed painting and sold his work successfully through Continental Galleries until his death in 1967. Pilot's paintings are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. |
Through her paintings, Mary Pratt (nee West, 1935-2018) celebrated the wonderfully ordinary. In a style of flamboyant realism, Pratt transformed jars of jelly, cracked eggs, a bowl of fruit and other common household items into transcendent experiences.
Mary Pratt studied at Mount Alison University, Sackville, NB, graduating in 1961. She worked with painter Alex Colville, whose influence on her work is clear from her early movement into realism. However, Pratt herself remarked that childhood memories of light and colour more powerfully informed her visual vocabulary. In 1957, Pratt married fellow art student Christopher Pratt and by 1964, they had had four children. With limited time to sketch or paint, Pratt sought a new method of working. She experimented with photography taking snaps with a simple camera, capturing transient moments of light. As it took some weeks for film to be processed at that time. When the photos did finally arrive, the recorded image of the moment, for Pratt, had changed in potency and meaning. The colourful, super realist paintings she ultimately manifested from these photos elevated the everyday to a state of ritual. "The reality comes first, and the symbol comes after. I see these things, and suddenly they become symbolic of life." ~ Mary Pratt, 1985 In the 1970s, Pratt turned to depictions of women going about their daily, personal activities. Close up and in detail, these paintings are fearless, exculpatory documents of domestic life. Pratt's paintings have been exhibited in major galleries in Canada including a solo show Mary Pratt: This Little Painting at the National Gallery of Canada (2016). Earlier survey exhibitions include the London Regional Art Gallery (1981) and the McLaughlin Gallery (1983). Pratt’s work has been reproduced in Saturday Night, Chatelaine and Canadian Art. In 1996, she was named Companion of he Order of Canada and in 1997 was awarded the Canada Council Molson Prize. She has received nine honorary doctorates from universities across Canada. Her work is found in prominent public, corporate and private collections including those of the National Gallery of Canada, The Rooms, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the New Brunswick Museum, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario and Canada House, UK. |