Rick Janson Art Studio

Prior to moving to Oshawa in 2002, my only experience of the city was hurtling by on the 401 at a hundred kilometres per hour (or so). I always remembered seeing the onion dome of the church at the corner of Ritson and Bloor from the recessed highway.

I initially landed a job in downtown Toronto in September of that year. It took us a little while to sell our Halifax house, and then it was off to find something we could afford in the GTA. I like to tell people that I continued to drive east until I found something we could afford. In fact, I really did that virtually via the on-line MLS listings, then turned over my ignition key and made the trek.

I grew up in Toronto, my restless parents having set up house in boroughs both east and west as well as in the city proper. Arriving in Halifax for what was a temporary position, I used to like to say to my Nova Scotia friends that I went the wrong way down the road. People were supposed to migrate the other way, after all.

But eventually the need to make a living prompted me to come back to Ontario, as have many native Nova Scotians before me.

I knew nothing about Oshawa at the time, but driving around it looked… well… rather nice. At the time it had a reputation for being a rough industrial town down on its luck. GM had once been the main employer, but between automation and competition in the auto industry, the workforce got a lot smaller. And given the shift in employment, the nature of the city changed.

We purchased a home just south of King Street, and settled in. It didn’t take me long to set up a space in the basement where I could make art. Oshawa being new to me, everywhere seemed to be good subject matter for painting. I made a point of making Oshawa-specific work. Nobody else appeared to be doing so.

It didn’t take long before I had enough material for a show, and the Oshawa Little Theatre offered up the walls of its lounge to me for the run of one of its plays. The reaction? Nada. Nothing. No comments. No inquiries. No interest in a purchase. It’s like I got shunned. It’s like the home grown audience turned its back.

Oshawa has the kind of problems many cities have, including a visible homeless population, but it also has a lot going for it. GM is not what it once was, but we have a significant health and education infrastructure, including Ontario Tech University which has undergone rapid expansion. It also has great community facilities, including swimming facilities, terrific parks and libraries.

Being affordable, I thought it would be one of those places where artists would also flock. There does appear to be an active visual arts community, but its not reflected in how people see the city. Nobody says, “Oshawa, what an arts hub.” The Oshawa Art Association’s shows at Camp Samac do draw a lot of people. The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (RMG) is a terrific space and has an important permanent collection, including notable work from Toronto’s Painters Eleven group. The building itself was designed by Canadian architect Arthur Erikson. There is an artists workshop on Simcoe Street, but beyond that, there are no commercial galleries in the city, and only one that I am aware of in Durham Region. That’s an area of nearly half a million people. One commercial gallery?

Tommy’s (2006) Oil on Canvas. Private Collection.

The RMG does a good job of connecting with the community, hosting group exhibitions where it invites participation from various segments of the population, including shows by local high school students and members of the art association. I noticed a call for entries for an upcoming exhibition/competition among seniors (I’m one). They also have hosted RMG Friday nights, which attract surprisingly large crowds for the art, music and food. The first time I ever saw the local band Professors of Funk was there.

When I first arrived looking for a house, I spoke with a real estate agent operating a kiosk at the Oshawa Centre mall. Discreetly she told me that Oshawa wasn’t for me. It’s very blue collar, she said. I should instead look at Whitby.

The funny thing is I now live in a neighbourhood where many of my neighbours are either professionals or high skilled trades. With a large health care complex, a university and a college, who is living here is rapidly changing, not that there is anything wrong with being blue collar.

But I have noticed that Oshawa is slow to shed that sad industrial reputation. On-line it has many critics, making we wonder why so many of these people continue to live here given the level of vitriol they hold for the city.

One of my relatives told me that the city surprised them — that it was a lot nicer than they had previously thought. One of their sons enrolled in post-secondary education here.

After the disappointing show at the Oshawa Little Theatre, I backed away from making Oshawa-specific work. But I have started again, although this time out, I’m making work about the specific community I live in. If food can be about going local, I was going to take it to an extreme. You might say it is hyper-local. More on that in a future post.

One of the early Oshawa paintings I really liked is one I did of a french fry stand down near the beach. A colleague of mine from Oshawa chose it for a retirement gift some time ago. Every time I look at it I feel cheerful.

Unlike many of my paintings, this one was not laboured. It came quickly. I didn’t overload the detail. The colours sang to me. I loved that in the original reference photo someone waved back at me. To me, this is the Oshawa I wanted to paint.

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