Rick Janson Art Studio

A Hiccup on My Bucket List

February 2, 2026

It’s still on my bucket list. Madrid’s Museo del Prado has a problem many galleries wish they had — overattendance. Last year the Prado broke records hosting 3.5 million visitors to the gallery. Of those visitors, almost two-thirds were “overseas visitors” — um, people like me. When I hear attendance caps, I do wonder how much harder it will be to get in?

Having established this new record for attendance, the Museum is now saying not a single person more. They have vowed to cap attendance, but haven’t yet said how. They also want to make the Prado more enticing to Spaniards.

The museum was originally founded in 1819, although it didn’t become nationalized and renamed the Prado until 1868. Like the Louvre, its collection is also capped by time period, finishing in the early 20th Century. Picasso’s Guernica (1937) was originally moved there after the dictator Franco died and Spain’s democracy restored, a stipulation of Picasso’s before the painting could return to Spain. In 1992, not fitting with the collection at The Prado, it was moved to the Museo Reina Sofia, also in Madrid. Instead you’ll find the best collection of Spanish art in the world, and surprisingly, the second greatest collection of Italian art after, well, Italy.

Wanting to go to the Prado goes back to my teens when my Grade 9 and 10 art teacher first did a class on Francisco Goya, who’s romantic works captured my imagination both in its subject matter and the way the paint was applied — later I was to learn how heavily influenced Goya was by Diego Velasquez. Some of his best-known paintings are at The Prado, including The Third of May 1808 (1814) which depicts a rigid French firing squad gunning down an irregular group of Spanish rebels from the Dos de Mayo Uprising in Madrid. The painting was commissioned by the Spanish government — apparently upon the suggestion of Goya himself — after the French had departed. Kenneth Clark described the painting as the first of the modern era: “the first great picture which can be called revolutionary in every sense of the word, in style, and intention.”

This week on the Artnet weekly podcast The Art Angle, Ben Davis, Kate Brown and Naomi Rea discuss the situation at the Prado, drawing the obvious parallels to the Louvre. I remember showing up at the Louvre in 2019 without a phone to find that entries were timed and that I had to purchase my tickets on-line and in advance. Being far from home, I managed to charm them to let me in anyway. That was the last time I travelled without a cell phone. Early in the day timed entries work, although in a museum as large as The Louvre, it catches up later in the day given those who arrive early don’t necessarily leave early.

Timed entry is a likely to be a solution to the overcrowding for the Prado, according to the discussion, but I wonder if will also mean higher charges from non-EU visitors, as has been done at the Louvre this year. Prices for overseas visitors to the Louvre increased by 45 per cent — to 32 euros (about $52 Canadian). Given the talk about all the overseas visitors, this would not surprise me.

Of more interest was the discussion around the housing of the star attractions. In Paris, the Louvre has created a dedicated room only for the Mona Lisa. When I visited, it was in a temporary location in a large room lined with other masterpieces that were difficult to look at given the large snaking line makings its way between the crowd control ropes. It effectively not only made the Mona Lisa difficult to view, but everything else in the room as well. The line also snaked up the stairwell, making the entire section of the Louvre difficult to get around. In the end, I found the line and the reaction of the tourists far more interesting than the painting itself (its small — 77 x 55 cm). By the time I got to the cattle pen closest to the Da Vinci, it was still a great distance away and most people just pulled out their cameras and took pictures as if they had never encountered a picture of the Giaconda before.

Crowds snake along in a massive line to get a glimpse of the Mona Lisa in 2019.

Many galleries have chosen to do this — this fall we saw Glasgow’s Kevlingrove hive off its star attraction — Dail’s 1951 painting of Christ of St. John of the Cross. The room was not that large and it had the feeling of entering a peep show, but it did allow us to view the rest of the collection without any problems.

Star attractions do tend to cluster people — a reality more noticeable at the Musee D’Orsay where some of the most beloved impressionist works were difficult to approach for the crowds in front of them. The Artnet discussion had suggested that some of these works might instead travel to the regional galleries in Spain. I can’t imagine art pilgrims making the trip to the Prado to find out their favorite piece is now in Seville. It also raises questions about the safety of the work itself given that kind of travel.

These museums also have to be aware of what the crowding means not only for visitor experience, but the risk to the artworks too. In recent years there have been a number of valuable museum pieces that have been damaged or destroyed by visitors. And let’s not forget when the staff walked out of the Louvre, one of their stated concerns was the difficulty of doing their job amid all the overcrowding.

One can’t help but think that such galleries are going to be increasingly challenged in the near future, as travellers choose the EU over the United States as their preferred destination. This after we just got over the post-COVID travel wave. Canadians may be among the first to say they won’t travel to a United States for obvious safety reasons, but they won’t be the last either.

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Have been painting a lot in the studio this past week. Several pieces will likely reach conclusion soon. It was my intention to produce a number of affordable “smalls” (12″ x 12″) in anticipation of the Scugog Studio Tour May 2-3, but I am finding that the time required on them is not that different that a 16″ x 20″ painting. Watch for a future post on the dilemmas of size. Meanwhile, if you want to look at my stuff without all this palaver, click here.
Alone but never lonely — an art week

January 29, 2026

I was rather shy as a kid. While I had friends, I was okay with my own company too, playing with my Corgis, gluing together model airplanes, flipping through a book or making a drawing. My mother said I was an easy kid. Most introverts likely would be. When I went to art school I observed many students just like me. While the pursuit of art making can be considered a solitary activity much of the time, I am okay with that. I go into a mental zone when I cross the threshold of my “art hut” studio, selecting some tunes for the stereo, adjusting the temperature, and going to whatever is scheduled for the easel that day. Keep in mind that for those who hope to go out into the world, half of your time is spent on the business side, from maintaining websites, responding to call for entries, refilling art supplies, picking up and delivering paintings to and from shows, tracking receipts, organizing your studio and participating with artist groups. I am presently also working on a book of my work, trying to translate what I see in my work into words. I’ve got quotes from several printers and hope to have the first copies available by the time of the Scugog Studio Tour.

It’s not to say artists don’t collaborate. In Canada we have the often told stories of the Group of Seven taking a train to the northland and painting together in the wilderness. And of course, everyone knows about the ill fated relationship between Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. Some artists rely on a team of artists and technicians to do their work. When we were in Scotland we saw an exhibition of work by funny man Billy Connolly. The stainless steel sculptures and the large-scale prints were done from Billy’s drawings by other artists under his supervision — the same gallery also had work by Johnny Depp and Bob Dylan which I suspect would have also similarly relied upon others. I have participated in group events with my colleagues, including Paint The Town in Annapolis Royale. Once a year artists descend on the rural Nova Scotia town, paint en plein air, then have their often wet work collected by volunteers in pizza boxes who take it back to the Art Centre. At night a silent auction takes place in which the proceeds are split between the fundraiser for the centre and the artist. The biggest show I was involved with was Ecphore ’87 in Halifax. I was chair of the Ecphore Exhibition Society that year. We hosted about 200 artists in an old disused building in downtown Halifax. Over the course of the two weeks it was open we saw about 5,000 people come through, including about a thousand people at the opening and closing. It also generated a fair amount of media attention. What artists can do when they work together can be surprising.

You Do You at the Leslie Grove Gallery.

Many communities have art groups that meet regularly, stage workshops and often exhibit together. I belong to several of these, including the Artists Network in Toronto, of which I have a painting in a juried show opening this evening (January 29, 2026) at the Leslie Grove Gallery (which is run by the Network). Last week I joined an on-line workshop with them that sought to answer what juries are looking for in call for entries. In the end, I think the best advice is simply to read the posted instructions carefully. In December I attended another about how to photograph your art for submissions.

Last week I also travelled to Ashburn, a small community in North Whitby. It’s there that I will be sharing space with two other artists as part of the Scugog Studio Tour at the beginning of May. I met Pat Neal, a textile artist who stunned me with her light filled loft studio filled with looms. On the day she will have her students present to offer demonstrations. I was grateful for all her generous advice in preparation for the tour — while I have exhibited in numerous group exhibitions, I have never participated in an organized tour like this before. Her studio is in a converted barn — her looms situated on the second floor. What is normally storage on the lower level will be cleared out for myself and glass artist Marjolyn Pritchard, of which Pat made numerous helpful suggestions on how I might set up. She already thought through a bright alcove next to the window for Pritchard. Pat is hoping for less than grand weather on the day — she told me that their tour numbers are down on glorious May weekends when the sun is out and the flowers and plants are calling for their gardeners. Normally a weekend will see about 200 people come through. When I described my goals for this year, she had suggested going to the Scugog Memorial Library in nearby Port Perry. Just to the left of the front entrance of the library is the Kent Farndale art gallery, named after a library volunteer who was responsible for curating community art shows there. With more group shows behind me, I decided to send in an application to exhibit — three week shows now booking into 2027. The gallery on the day I visited featured work by Stephanie MacKendrick who shares my interest in travel. I bought a small 12″ x 12″ painting of the Thames River in London.

I also stopped in at Scugog Arts, where I had assisted on editing the “book” for the studio tour. Coming across my own description, I realized that I should have taken a second look before hitting send. The people in the gallery space were very welcoming — as are most gallerists I have met.

I have also begun to think about what to submit to the Oshawa Art Association annual juried show at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. Their meetings are not far from where I live and are usually more oriented around making art than the business side of it. It’s fun to get out and see what others are doing, and talk to people who often share your language and love for art. The OAA meets monthly at the Artists Resource Centre next to City Hall.

It’s been a hectic few weeks, much of it spent out of my studio space. At the top of this post I placed an image I took coming back on the GO Train from Toronto after dropping off my painting at the Leslie Grove Gallery on Monday. In the dead of winter, its about art promotion, art making, and clearing snow. Apologies to Murray McLauchlan for stealing today’s post header.

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Want to just look at example of my work? Click here to see my on-line gallery.
Being present in the City of Light

January 13, 2026

This is probably the worst sales pitch ever. The second painting of mine to be completed in 2026 has to be among the saddest I’ve ever done, although I have been thinking about it since I snapped a photo of two people in a Paris cafe who seemed to be totally absorbed in their cell phones.

It was during a free day in the City of Light. I was determined to collect images that day which would provide fodder for my easel over the next few years. Most of those images tend to glorify the social aspect of the city, cafes filled with people interacting in that old-fashioned way: face to face. In an age of increased isolation and loneliness, walking around Paris appeared to be the anecdote to such affliction. I was also determined to visit many of the sites painted by the masters, filled with the idea that it would be interesting to revisit those sites and bring my own approach to the same subject matter a century or more later.

It was still relatively early in the day when I passed this pair and their dog. The two were not in the present. The dog was. The cafe was in Le Marais, not far from the Pompidou Centre. I have no idea of whether they were French for foreign tourists, or whether they were even together. The way these cafes work it is often difficult to tell, which has the added bonus of throwing people together to interact with one another — something we definitely did during our time in Paris.

I don’t mean to pass judgment — I think everyone wrestles with how much of their lives are controlled by their phones and somebody else could have just as easily stumbled across me doing the same. But it seemed particularly ironic in a city with as much life as Paris.

According to a paper published by the Oxford University Press, there are two hypothesis regarding cell phones and loneliness. The Displacement Hypothesis suggests that nomophobia (an addiction to your cell phone) leads to loneliness, whereas the Compensatory Internet Use Theory suggests that people who are already lonely develop an addiction to their phones. The paper itself leaned more to the latter than the former.

In the end, I ventured to capture that feeling of loneliness in the picture. I think it may have looked differently without the dog as contrast to what was going on.

Social Time (2026) 16″ x 20″ Oil on Canvas

In a recent interview with the New York Times, writer George Saunders speaks about Chekhov: “He says a work of art doesn’t have to solve a problem — it just has to formulate it correctly… (On Lincoln In The Bardo) I wrote myself into a place where the question got more and more profound, and I found myself less and less capable of giving a definitive answer. That’s not for an artist to do.”

While technology has changed our lives and made things more convenient in many ways (remember when you used to have to line up hours early before a box office opened to get tickets to your favorite band?) the technology also changes us in many ways, perhaps something we are becoming increasingly aware of in an increasingly scary world. Saunders appears aware of this, noting that he’s as flawed as anyone else, “one who’s still wrestling with questions about how to best move through life with a modicum of grace and compassion.”

I hope some of that ambivalence and searching comes through my painting.

This painting will be on view and can be purchased January 28 to March 1, 2026 at the Leslie Grove Gallery Gallery, 1158 Queen St. E. in Toronto (at Jones). The painting is listed at $1200 CDN (including the black float frame it will be shown in). Most of my work is shown in non-commercial municipal galleries, so this is a chance to purchase directly from the Leslie Grove Gallery. Additional work will also be available for sale in May as part of the Scugog Studio Tour. More information on that to come.

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In recent days I have been working on a small painting of a carnival at night. I got a little flustered after a while, realizing I couldn’t replicate the colours of the rides with conventional oil paints. I went on-line and found that I could get neon colours in a alkyd resin oil paint that works with conventional oils. Those paints arrived this morning, and I’ll let you know how it went when I get back to that canvas (I rotate four or five works at a time). The alkyd apparently helps the paint to dry faster too, allowing one to layer more quickly.

Meanwhile, don’t forget to a) subscribe (it’s free and I won’t fill your inbox with spam) and b) if your not into reading a bunch of words, you can skip ahead to my portfolio by clicking here.
The Peace

January 11, 2026

I don’t really do pastoral images largely because it is not my lived experience. I’m an urban dweller, and most of the places I like to visit are urban. I decided almost immediately that I would paint this image not because of what was in front of me, but because of what was immediately behind me. They appear related.

In 2002 we met up in the predawn hours near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to take a tour of Juno Beach in Normandy, the battleground where the Canadian forces came ashore on D-Day. There were many people waiting for buses that morning in Paris on one of the spokes leading to the Arc, most of them Amercians headed for Omaha Beach. Only six of us boarded a passenger van headed for Juno.

It was quiet that day, not a surprise given the reminder of the sacrifice these young men made to rid Europe of an axis of fascist regimes that had terrorized so many people. It was hard to imagine the noise of battle as they stormed ashore given all we could hear at the beach that day in 2022 was the wind and waves. Nearby there was a group of windsurfers preparing to go out.

We visited the beach, saw what became known as “Canada House,” the first building captured by any Allied forces on D-Day. We saw the impressive museum erected by Canada and toured the remains of a German bunker. We took in one of the peaceful war cemeteries and shown the furthest point inland any Allied force had gotten to on that day — the Canadians achieve stealth and speed by bringing their bicycles.

The last stop of the day was at the Abbaye d’Ardenne on the outskirts of Caen. When we got our of the van, the first thing I saw was this pastoral scene with the cows. When I turned I saw the Abbaye and a stone wall holding the pictures and names of 20 Canadian soldiers who had been executed at that spot by SS Colonel Kurt Meyer. According to Veteran’s Affairs, 156 Canadian prisoners had been executed by the 12th SS Panzer Division during the Normandy invasion.

Meyer was eventually put on trial for his war crimes. He was sentenced to death, but that was commuted to life in prison. Meyer only served eight years before being released in 1954. He died seven years later. Our tour guide thought the Canadians were far too lenient with Meyer given what he had done.

As unthinkable as this atrocity was, I kept drawing back to the cows, thinking perhaps this was the dividend for ridding Europe of fascism and all the fear that came with it. Despite being close to Caen, it was very quiet. It was what peace looked like. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

Normandy (2026) 16″ x 20″ Oil on Canvas

Curiously, as the world experiences new war crimes, crimes against humanity and cases of genocide, the Trump administration is trying to undermine the International Criminal Court in the Hague by imposing steep sanctions on judges and prosecutors and urging countries to withdraw from participating with it. In today’s New York Times article on the Trump sanctions, they quote Kimberly Prost, a Canadian judge, who has been targeted by Washington’s sanctions on the Hague: “You lose immediate access to all the main credit cards that go through the Swift system, which is controlled by the US,” she said. “My Amazon and Google Accounts were closed. You cannot pay for your utilities, your subscriptions. You’re completely crippled when it comes to booking hotels, trains, flights. You can’t buy dollars because your name is flagged.”

The US has never recognized the court, and last summer threatened legal penalties to two New York law professors in order to pressure them to abandon their association with the international court. At present the ICC has outstanding warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The trial of former Philippines strongman Rodrigo Duterte is about to begin soon, according to the Times.

The generation that stormed the beaches of Normandy are few now, most having passed away. But the world now faces a new threat of fascism, not just in the US, but in countries throughout the world. Is this the end of the peace?

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Want to see more recent work by me? Click here.
Exhausting To Think About

January 9, 2026

I get tired just thinking about it. It’s about storms, both metaphorical and real. Instead of making art, I find myself spending hours clearing snow from around the house, and in between, prevent ice build-up during the times when the temperatures hover around zero. I also keep on wrestling with the idea of changing my narratives given the chaos of the world, but then again think that perhaps it might be time to escape all that and establish my own narratives?

And in the midst of it all we just came through the holiday season. Maintaining traditions means for us bringing down bins of material from the attic to decorate the house — a process that takes about five days. We return the emptied bins to the attic only to bring them down again after New Year to carefully pack everything up again. Thankfully that’s a much shorter period — two days. A recent tradition has involved a lighted Christmas village we have built up over many years. Each year I place a Batman figurine in there, and the grandkids try and find him — kind of a Where’s Waldo moment. This year Batman was buying a taco at the food truck, helping out at the tree lot, warming himself beside Santa at a campfire, and surveying the city atop the cathedral.

Amid all the craziness in the world, I was stunned to read that the Pompidou Centre in Paris was closing its doors for the next five years. Opened in 1977, it is undergoing a second round of renovations, the first done in the late 1990s.

For those not familiar with the Centre, it houses the world’s second largest museum of modern art, a large reference library, a cinema and a music and acoustics research centre. It draws about five million visitors a year to its Paris location in the Marais, although the Pompidou also has a series of satellite locations across the world, including in Brazil, China, Spain and Belgium. None yet for Canada, sadly.

The Pompidou has a collection of nearly 120,000 items, some of which will go into storage, others distributed to these satellites during the five-year renovation process. As a December 21 New York Times article noted, it took the Louvre three days to pack up and move 4,000 “national treasures” to safety prior to World War II. It’s anticipated that one single exhibit at the Pompidou will take closer to five weeks to pack up — Le magasin de Ben — which was an actual record and camera shop in Nice prior to being moved to the Pompidou Centre in 1974.

When I visited the Pompidou in 2022, I was captivated by it. Ben Vautier had made his shop a hang out for the art community in Nice, constantly adding found objects to the display and encouraging the participation of those who frequented the shop. The shop itself became a piece of art. When it came to the Pompidou, it was accompanied by a 300-page manual on how to reassemble it on site. The conservators are now using that manual to disassemble it as well as undertake restoration on artifacts within the shop — no doubt some were never intended to last this long. That includes photographing every little bit of it.

Le magasin de Ben (1958-1973) Mixed Media. It was installed at the Pompidou Centre prior to its opening in 1977.

Curiously, while our travelling companions in 2022 were eager to get to the Musee D’Orsay, I spend the day alone at the Pompidou, which meant I could view the gallery at my own pace and felt little responsibility to the others in our party as a result. While I lament the lack of popular interest in modern art, the Pompidou still receives nearly five million visitors a year.

The collection is an incredible survey of the development of art in the 20th century and is very international in scope. You’ll get to see a Dubuffet in one room, a Pollock in another.

I get tired thinking about what a task it would be to pack up so many art items, not to mention an entire library of books on the lower level, some of which will go to an alternate location in Paris. And when the renovation is done — the Pompidou plans to reopen in 2030 — all this has to be put back again.

Jardin D’Hiver (1969-70) by Jean Dubuffet.

The Pompidou was the center of controversy when it first opened. The design competition was awarded to two young architects — Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano — who seemed equally shocked that their radical “inside-out” design had won the competition. All the technical functions of the building that are normally hidden were featured on the outside, colour-coded to their function. Like the Eiffel Tower, it was initially derided by the press, but Parisians came to love the building over time.

While under renovation the building will celebrate its 50th year in 2027.

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It has been a busy time for me — I have been working hard at completing some work to enter into another juried show in Toronto next month. Deadline is this weekend. I’ve also been gathering quotes for an art book I hope to have ready by the time of the Scugog Studio Tour in May. The book would be an introduction to my work and highlight some of the newer pieces to come out of my “art hut.” I started writing it more than a year ago — the difficulty is choosing when to put a cap on the work I would like to see in it. You always think the next piece is going to be the truly great one — the “just one more” syndrome. I currently have a piece on show in the Rare Form group show at the Station Gallery in Whitby. I also started to work on some smaller pieces that I hope would be more affordable for the Studio Tour in May. Hopefully in the next day or two I will have a new piece (or possibly) two up on this site. I tend to work on multiple pieces at a time, so it can sometimes be a long time between new works, then they seem to arrive in a flurry. Of the four pieces I have on the go, the one I am struggling with is the most experimental of the lot. While many of my pieces involve travel, this one actually travels back in time. It is taking shape, but the lack of clear references for it does make it a challenge.
A comeback for contemporary painting?

December 19, 2025

The year I graduated from Art School, the art world was in one of its “painting is dead” moments in 1987. It had been three years since New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) had last held an exhibition of contemporary painting – MOMA having included my professor among the world’s 100 most promising painters. One of the pre-eminent gatekeepers of modern art, it would not stage another for 25 years. That alone speaks volumes of the world I stepped into as a painter. Any wonder I made my living elsewhere for the last 40 years?

Painting appears to be making a comeback these days, not that it entirely went away. It was kept alive not by curators of contemporary art, but by collectors and members of the public who refused to turn their backs to it. Painting continues to be well-represented at the international art fairs, where booths are expensive and the ability to actually sell something and collect commission is necessary to cover those costs. Declaring painting dead likely didn’t help.

Wednesday night my spouse and I attended the opening of Rare Form at the Station Gallery in Whitby. The Station Gallery is one of the many small municipally-run non-commercial galleries that offer a lifeline to local emerging artists who are seeking to develop an exhibition record and get their work in front of the public. Rare Form is the 33^rd Annual community exhibition, drawing in so many people on its opening night that it was uncomfortable. Some people (not us) were wise enough to wear surgical masks amid a particularly bad flu season.

We were told that there were 200 applicants to the show’s call for entry, of which it appears about 150 made the exhibition. That led to some very crowded spaces – the Station Gallery has only three modest-sized salons on its main floor. I felt badly for anyone who was hung in the corridor between the last two galleries – it was next to impossible to look at the work there amid all the people coming and going. My painting was hung in the second gallery, just above a fire alarm, the bartender kidding me that my painting must have been hot stuff. At least I made a wall space — others were shown on easels. As much as I admire their attempt to be as inclusive as possible, the jury should have likely tried a little harder to move the number of selections downwards. Quality over quantity. I think that most artists would prefer it that way too. Of course, amid a crowd like that it is also impossible to properly take in the show.

As a point of comparison, I recently applied to the Think Pink show at the Leslie Grove Gallery (starting January 7^th). I didn’t make the cut, but neither did three of four applicants. They too had more than 200 submissions and limited their selection to 54. The last colour-theme show I had participated in with this group was 2006, then at the Eastern Front Gallery. I was fortunate to be among the small number who were selected back then for the Blue Show. My turn will come around.

While paintings likely dominated submissions (I didn’t count) in Whitby, none of them made the top three awards on the evening, the prizes going to a ceramic piece (three mugs attached together with a ceramic chain), an abstract(?) fabric piece, and a small sculpture assembly that looked a little goth or new age to me. Amid the crowds, I was worried that the ceramic piece was most at risk: I noticed one woman narrowly missed knocking it off its plinth with her handbag while squeezing past other patrons.

My spouse also noted the lack of landscapes among the selected work. She did like one landscape made of felt, and there were some landscape photos, but there wasn’t a lot overall. This in a country predominantly known for its natural vistas. Are we finally past the Group of Seven? Maybe? On-line it would be hard to make that argument given all the Group of Seven wannabes posting their rocks, trees and lakes with zeal. Maybe landscape artists know better than to enter competitions? Coincidentally this morning’s Art Net post noted the comeback in landscapes, with of course, a modern twist around story telling. That trend may be a little slow to get out to us in the burbs.

At the beginning of the 19^th Century landscape was considered to be the lowest form of art, many believing that artists did little more than go out in nature and copy what they saw, compared to, for example, history painters. That all changed and got supercharged with artists like Corot and later the French Impressionists. In Canada we had the aforementioned Group of Seven. But then the rest of the 20^th Century was not particularly kind to landscape, and I feel we have somehow gone back 200 years.

Funniest moment on Wednesday night: A fellow artist who likely knew me from the Oshawa Art Association asked which piece in the show was mine? I said it was the self-portrait on the wall above the fire alarm. “Who’s it of?” she asked before realizing her faux pas and laughing.

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I also noticed this week that the Estate of singer Marianne Faithfull went on the auction block with some shockingly low numbers. That included two portraits of the singer that went for less than what a lot of parents paid for their kids to see Taylor Swift. One of the portraits was by 1960s “It girl” Anita Pallenburg, a film actor (Barbarella) and model who had three children with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. That would be double celebrity cred. As my spouse said, Faithfull has been out of the spotlight for a long time, although for me her album Broken English is among the great rock LPs of the 1970s. While I am tempted to say that being dead will take you out of the spotlight, recently there have been a number of women artists who are resurgent at auction and commanding big prices, of course long after (sometimes centuries) they could have possibly benefited from it.
A little TV could help

December 10, 2025

Why is it the public in the UK likes to watch television shows about its artists, unlike, say… Canada? Last night I stumbled across yet another UK art series streaming in Canada. Extraordinary Portraits has been around since 2021 and continues to issue new episodes. In each episode a noteworthy individual is matched up with an artist to have their portrait done. Simple. Some of the artists are well-established, others are emerging.

The premier episode is about Georgia and Melissa Laurie — twins — who survived a crocodile attack in Mexico. The one bravely jumped in to free her twin from the jaws of the croc when the sister failed to get out of the water in time. Mauled by the gator, the sister spent 12 days in a Mexican hospital before she could be returned to the UK. Portrait artist Roxana Halls is known for painting women using humour, so seeing her approach the subject was fascinating, skirting the line between tribute and kitsch. The twins wanted to see a croc in the painting. In the end, the twins were moved to (happy) tears after they saw the finished work. Art can be transforming.

Why is it in the UK there are many such shows, in Canada, none?

Ironically, I found the show after seeing the first episode of Rachel Griffith’s Australian series on the Archibald Prize, which honours the top portrait painting of the year in that country. It seems to be in perpetual rerun on TVO. In Canada we too have the Kingston (Portrait) prize, but it is only biennial, meaning there won’t be one in 2026. Plus unlike the Archibald, very few people here even know about it despite the prize being substantial– the winner takes home $25,000 and the top 30 entries tour the country (probably even more important). I don’t think we’re going to see a multi-part television series about it from Mike Myers. In Canada we don’t like to talk about art much, at least not during the hockey season.

For years I have been watching both Portrait Artist of the Year and Landscape Artist of the Year, both very successful UK competitions that give viewers an up-close look at the process of art making. There is some unreality about it — the artists only have four hours to complete their work while under the scrutiny of the judges and spectators — but it does provide a showcase, including reviewing their often more polished submissions before the start of each competition. Canada did briefly try the same format as the UK, including the music, graphics and format, although they got cheap when it came to judges (two instead of the UK’s three) and the number of heats and artists in each heat. Unlike the UK competitions, which end with the winner taking on a prestigious commission for a public institution (and helping advance that artists’ career), Canada’s just ended by proclaiming a winner, giving them $10K (about half the winner’s take from the UK competition by the time you do the currency conversion) and showing their painting (for a limited time) at the McMichael in Kleinburg. While the Landscape artist competition does move around the UK, including Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the Canadian competition never gets out of Ontario. Boo. Cheapskates. No wonder it never saw a second season. What’s cheaper than Sky Arts? The CBC.

One thing I did notice over 10 years of the UK show is that the competition got better series by series. Perhaps once regarded as a gimmick, I think it started developing real credibility. The galleries that received the winning submissions say that it is hard to take these paintings off exhibition — patrons show up looking for them. The quality of the competitors was weak in that first season in Canada too, but we’re left wondering if it would have gone the same way as the UK had it been given proper resources, promotion and time. Likely what killed the Canadian version was COVID. The series came out in 2020. And nobody thought to bring it back.

Another playful and goofy UK art series was Drawer’s Off, which pits five amateur competitors against each other in a week-long life drawing competition. Each of the artists has to take a turn as the model and then score each other’s drawing at the end of each episode. While it is a life drawing competition, the artist/models are allowed to strategically cover up their private bits with props and fabric. It lasted two seasons — 2021-22 — which means it got a longer run than Landscape Artist of the Year in Canada. Canada never attempted a version of Portrait Artist.

I think in Canada we would rather poo poo these kinds of shows than actually stop and think about what they do in the culture. It gets people talking about contemporary art and gives exposure to artists.

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Denise Mina (2015) By Gerard M Burns, National Portrait Gallery of Scotland

What does the US, UK and Australia all have that Canada doesn’t? A National Portrait Gallery. When we were in Edinburgh we saw the National Gallery of Scotland’s Portrait Gallery. which includes three commissions from the Portrait Artist of the Year competitions. One of the portraits we really liked was Gerard M. Burns painting of mystery writer Denise Mina (above). It wasn’t from the TV series, but the TV series got us to the gallery to see it in the first place. Think about that. Canada once considered establishing a portrait gallery opposite the Peace Tower in the former American embassy. I guess they are still considering…
Red into Pink

December 4, 2025

Years ago I responded to a call for entry to a show at the Eastern Front Gallery that explored the colour blue. The invitation came through my involvement with the Riverdale Art Walk, having participated for several years in a fundraiser for them.

I recently signed up for the Artists’ Network, the same group of artists, which has since expanded its activities to a second Art Walk and operation of the Leslie Grove Gallery. They also do regular workshops with their membership, much like most others artist associations.

To my surprise, their colour-themed shows continue. The colour this year: pink. Blue or green I could just walk into my studio and pull out just about anything, but pink? That would require something new, but what?

I think pink is a much maligned colour, but as the Gallery has pointed out, internationally it has different meanings, including being associated with masculinity in Japan, or in Korea, it conveys trust.

It also symbolizes calmness and compassion, tranquility, tenderness, and innocence.

But what about Christmas?

Red Into Pink (2025) 12″ x 16″ Oil on Canvas

Last year I took a series of photos around our neighbourhood that could be the basis of future holiday cards. I came across one house with a display of red floodlights. To me, they looked pink against the trees and snow.

After roughing out a painting based on it, the first reaction I got was, yeah, but where’s the pink? I think I accidentally hit upon the idea that the context of how we see something can deceive us into seeing something different than how it actually presents.

The red lights turn into pink because at this time of year the traditional colours are red and green, and that’s what we expect to see. Not pink. So our brains compensate for what we are seeing. We also give some slack that red diluted with white light will cast more of a pink colour.

Literally, the painting still wet, I sent off the application yesterday — thankfully at this point I only needed to submit a digital image.

Meanwhile, it has got my head whirring — what else could I do to explore that theme further?

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Don’t forget to subscribe — its free and it frankly it helps my site to be seen by others. If you don’t want to read all the blah blah blah, feel free to go straight to my gallery of recent work by clicking here. If you are anywhere near the Eastern GTA, just a reminder that the Rare Form show is now on at the Station Gallery in Whitby. You’ll find me at the official opening December 17 from 7-9 pm.
Why do we treat art history as a frill?

December 3, 2025

When I entered Toronto’s Scarlett Heights Collegiate Institute in the early 1970s, I thought it was normal that a significant proportion of the school’s art program was in art history. I loved it, and the education I got in grades nine and ten set me up for my eventual enrolment at the University of Ottawa’s art school, then on to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where I received my BFA.

After my parents had moved from the West to the Eastern side of Toronto, I changed high schools, and to my disappointment found that classes were all about making art, not studying art. How can you make art without knowing about its history? That continued when we moved once more to Ottawa, where in Grade 13 there was no art history either.

It turned out my art teacher at SHCI was legendary for the art history classes he taught. He told us that his slide decks were frequently loaned out to other schools even though they belonged to him personally. He had travelled to many of the world’s great art museums to photograph the paintings and sculpture we studied in class. In the Louvre I had a particular moment, recognizing many of the paintings we painstakingly studied from Mr. Samatowka’s slides. There was one particular requirement in his art history classes — that we take home short art history essays he gave us and hand write them out. I don’t know if that was a way of burnishing them in our minds, or whether it was his way of making sure we read them? That was our home work. Other artists speak about Mr. Samatowka’s influence on their decision to enter art school and take this up as a profession. But as I learned, this level of attention to art history was an exception, not the rule. I lucked out, especially being a working-class kid who at that point in time had never set foot in an art gallery.

November 27th London’s Courtauld Institute of Art (affiliated with the University of London) announced it was establishing a foundation to raise 81 million pounds (about $150 million in Canadian dollars) for its 100th anniversary in 2032. A big part of that is about enhancing the physical site, but scholarships in art history were to be a big part of the plan given the perceived decline in art history studies . The original article noted that across the UK only 19 “state or non-fee paying schools” were now teaching art history to 16-18 year olds — all of them in England.

A day later the story was appended with a note to say that the number of student entering A-Levels in Art History was virtually the same between 2016 and 2025. There had been no decline in the interest in the topic, even if the outlets to study were diminishing for English teens.

In art historian Kate Bryan’s most recent book, How To Art, she speaks about growing up as a working class kid and not having exposure to art beyond what she could see in books. As she writes: “I just didn’t know anyone who talked about art, owned art, or visited museums. I wasn’t related to anyone who’d gone to university. I didn’t have much money for train fares, and I didn’t know that public museums in the UK are free.” She said that her art world experience prior to university was a single school trip to the Tate. She ended up becoming an art historian quite by chance, stumbling across the History of Art gazebo at an education fair at the University of Reading.

I felt much the same. My parents would have not even considered taking me as a kid to an art gallery. It’s not somewhere they would have gone by themselves either. Curiously, late in life, I took them to a folk-art gallery in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, of which my mother spoke way too loudly about the work on display, proclaiming even she could do better. I was shocked by the emotion, even if it was to trash everything she saw. In the end, she did go back home and started making her own wonky paintings. I have one on my wall in this room. That’s the power of art — even if you may not like what you are seeing on any given day. I think it unlocked something in her.

My Dad did show all of us how to draw, and there were these art books around the house that looked like something a grocery store would have issued. I have no idea where they came from. I was always encouraged to draw until I let him know that I wanted to go to art school. Suddenly the encouragement stopped. I couldn’t make a living from art, he told me over and over again. Going to art school was my big act of rebellion. My story is not that unusual among working class kids. And yes, in the end, I did make a living despite graduating with a BFA.

It amazes me how few parents actually do take their kids to public galleries. In the UK the public galleries are free to everyone. In Ontario, provincial residents under the age of 25 are admitted free to the AGO. If the parents want to skip the stiff $30 entry, the first Wednesday of the month is free for all visitors. You don’t have to be rich to look at art.

Does studying art history matter?

Well perhaps we can answer that question with another: does studying English matter?

I think the answer is of course — studying English not only sharpens our literacy skills, but helps us come to a more in-depth understanding of the world and ourselves. It rounds us out by getting into the heads of different writers and exposing us to alternate points of view. Life is not black and white. By becoming better readers we also become better writers. If you can’t express yourself, life can be full of frustration.

Is visual literacy important in the 21st century? Look around you. Do you understand the non-written cues in what you see every day? Are you missing the symbols? Do you get a feeling from looking at specific pieces of art that go beyond a simple narrative (eg — its a picture of a tree)? What does it mean to you?

I once took a workshop with musician and academic Tom Juravich, who suggested that if we want our audience to come to a deeper understanding of what we are saying, then the arts are a way to achieve that. How many of us have ever been moved by a song? A movie? A play? A novel?

How many people had their lives completely changed by walking through the doors of a gallery?

When I went to the University of Ottawa, the old National Gallery of Canada was just across the canal. Admission then was free, and I spent many hours there looking at art. It had a profound effect on me, including realizing that as an artist (or then as an art student) that I belonged within a continuum of art. Like all history, it brings a certain sense to the present.

Art history is not a frill. It’s not elitist, although it should be a clue that the elite see it as important for their own children to get a well-rounded education, including art history. It should be part of everyone’s education. We should all talk about it.

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Its been a hectic few weeks — I should have a new painting up on this site by tomorrow. Meanwhile, if you want to look back on my output over the last year and a half, click here. And if you are anywhere near in the Eastern GTA, please visit the group show I’m in at the Station Gallery: Rare Form. It is open to the public now, although the official opening is December 17 from 7-9 pm. Hope to see you there!

Talk about timing — I had just finished posting this when I received a fundraising letter from the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. In it, Alix Voz, the new director, writes: “At RMG we believe that art is not a luxury, it is a necessity… Art invites us to reflect, feel inspired, share stories and ideas, and discover new ways of seeing ourselves and one another.” Well said.

Image for today’s post: The Heads (2006) by Sophie Cave at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow.
Embarrassing that Canada is late to this party

November 29, 2025

Some good news that is a little embarrassing. It got little attention in Ottawa’s fall budget but will impact artists going forward. Canadian artists have been fighting for it for years. In the fall budget the Federal government has finally signalled that it will adopt Artist Resale Rights — visual artists (or their estates) will receive five per cent of the sale price when their work is resold in the secondary market, such as when their owners sell the work at auction or through a commercial gallery.

Given it is only a budget item, it has yet to become law, so the details are yet unknown beyond what was signalled in the budget.

So why is this embarrassing? Because we are finally going to extend these rights after more than 90 other countries have already done so.

Let that sink in. Most developed countries in the world have already adopted these rights. When Southeby’s sells works at auction in New York or London, artists get their taste of the proceeds. Not in Toronto, where most artists do not make enough from their work to even sustain themselves.

CARFAC (Canadian Artists Representation, Le front des artistes Canadien) notes that ARR will make a difference for indigenous artists who have been long exploited by the art market. The example most often given is the well-known Enchanted Owl by Inuit artist Kenoujuak Ashevak. Her original stone cut print sold for $24 in 1960. Most recently it resold for $158,500, of which the artists’ estate received nothing. Ashevak died in 2013.

One wonders how the lives of many aging artists would have been changed had such rights already been put in place. Shame on Canada for taking so long.

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This week another piece of mine goes on display at the Station Gallery in Whitby. My third self portrait study will be part of Rare Form, the 33rd Annual Juried Exhibition at the galllery. It is one of its best attended shows of the year. I signed my show contract yesterday. Originally scheduled to begin on Monday, my understanding is Rare Form is now open this weekend. The official opening — including announcement of competition winners — will not be until December 17th from 7 – 9 pm at the Gallery. The show runs to January 25, 2026. Please come if you can.

So how did my self-portrait become part of this? I originally thought the theme was a different one, having downloaded a form that turned out to be old internet flotsam for the same show. I had completed the painting on the different theme, then realized the mistake I had made, not noticing the due date for entry on the form was in 2023. Whoops. At the time I was working on a series of self-portraits and thought about the fact that they better fit the show’s actual theme. How many times have I been told that I’m in “rare form” today? Okay, that’s mostly for snappy retorts, but hey. What could be rarer than, well… us? Thanks to my neighbour Jeff who took the painting down to the gallery when I was away in the UK.

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It has been a rush since I’ve been back from Scotland. The first priority was to complete our “book,” kind of an annual report/visual diary that goes out to family and friends around this time of year. I’ve been doing these books for 17 years, the last 15 printed through Blurb, an on-line printer based in San Francisco (although the printing appears to have taken place all over the US judging from the shipping details). Given the orange menace’s economic attacks on this country, I couldn’t in good conscience continue to print south of the border. With the exchange on the dollar, it was particularly killing me. I ended up finding a UK-based printer that has a plant here in the Greater Toronto Area. However, that did mean finding a new software that would work (Blurb’s is proprietary), as well as working out all the details on how the new printer (Mixam) would like to receive the material. That was a steep learning curve, especially after 15 years doing the same process. It didn’t help that I came back from the UK with more than 1300 photos which had to be downloaded and adjusted for print. I ended up doing more than half of the 248-page book in about a week and a half, including writing, paste up, selecting images, and of course, proofreading and uploading it.

Cherry Street (Halifax) (1987) 24″ x 30″ Oil on Canvas

In recent years we have started also doing Christmas cards using my paintings on the covers. I did have another painting in mind for this year, but it is still on the easel, is very wet right now, and may need a bit more work before it gets submitted December 7th to another juried group show in Toronto. Sooooo… I took a look at what else I had and decided to go back to the first piece I did after I graduated from art school in 1987. A winter scene, I liked it for what wasn’t in the picture — a large tree out of view that is throwing a very visible shadow against the wall of a house. I passed that house (Cherry and Robie) regularly while living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I applied the paint quite thickly, determined to shed my tight painting style (something I’m still attempting to do nearly 40 years later). All this time later the painting still hangs above our fireplace. The cards are expected back on Tuesday.

With the cards and the books underway, I have been back in the studio, not only on the aforementioned piece for the January show, but several others that I had started prior to travelling to the UK. After about an eight week break, it felt weird being back on them, but the brushes eventually found their way. I’m hoping to have all three done before the end of the year, although it may be a challenge given all the seasonal activity in the run up to the holiday season. The Highland Coo Christmas tree ornament has been barely unpacked! I also have a lot of material fresh in my mind from our recent trip to the UK that is calling out to me. “Rick, Rick… don’t forget about me!”

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