Rick Janson Art Studio

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. 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.

You might say it was an act of perversity to become a painter at that point in time, graduating with my BFA – which we cheeky students euphemistically called a Bachelor of “F-All” – from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. The school has since added the word “University” to the title, just in case there was any doubt. It started granting degrees in 1969 – the first art school in Canada to do so.

Curiously, one of MOMA’s darlings of the painting world was my professor and studio advisor, British post-war artist Riduan Tomkins (1941-2009). His time at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design was short (1983-86), likely his decision to move on spurred by a period of labour strife at the College. He is instead credited for influencing a generation of New Zealand painters after he left Nova Scotia. Those three years seldom get mentioned among his biographical details, although he remains vividly in my memory.

Tomkins frequently reminded us that we stood on the shoulders of those that went before us. Just as I studied under Tomkins (among others), he drew a direct pedagogical line from our class to British painter Walter Sickert, who in turn was a student of Edgar Degas. Tomkins would frequently recite who was a student of who until we arrived back at Degas’ Atelier.

One December, Tomkins was travelling over the Christmas break. With the College shutting down for a week, he asked if I would facilitate the pick-up of several of his paintings by his gallery in Toronto. I brought them back to the student apartment I shared and awaited the pick-up a few days later. It was stunning to see his paintings there in our modest living room. At the time his work featured a figure in the center of the composition, and layers of flat paint built up around it, the colours of the successive layers visible around the edges of the figure. It struck me that painting could offer a unique visual experience as the built-up layers of colour could not be easily replicated in any other medium, nor the sense of depth at the center of the canvas. To see his work on-line is a let-down after one has experienced it in the flesh.

His advice at the time seemed clear enough to me: just add more paint. Painting is about, well, paint.

It surprises me to see the return of figurative painting into the high end commercial galleries. Evidently the rumours of the demise of such painting were much exaggerated.

Similarly, it was interesting to see in yesterday’s Toronto Star a story about movie fans lining up to get into the Criterion Closet, a van that stocked, well, movies on DVD/Bluray. Albeit they were 40 per cent off, a rarity for Criterion, but the fact that people were lined up to purchase what many believe to be a dead medium was phenomenal. Criterion had to set limits — you had three minutes and could only buy three movies, so you had to know what you were looking for before getting your chance. I’ve been a big fan of Criterion films (even though they are American). They are wonderfully mastered, offer a selection of rare, international and art films, and load up their discs with incredible features. We just recently finished watching a box set put out by Criterion celebrating the collaboration between Noel Coward and David Lean. The films look incredible. The insight in the extras was terrific. But again, we are talking about hard copies of feature films — something that was supposed to be over. Even on Duolingo, I noticed that one of the dialogue pieces in French spoke about a school that still used DVD as being so last century. Is DVD/Bluray about to have a resurgence like vinyl? “I love owning movies,” one fan told the Star.

Today’s Image: My last post featured a pastel drawing — a rarity for me. However, I did follow through with an oil painting of the same image — a view across the water at Long Lake Provincial Park near Halifax. You can see how I was still searching for a more vibrant way to make my brushstrokes at that time (1999). I don’t often draw and paint the same subject matter, although I have been known to return to a subject I previously photographed to get a better idea of what was going on in the shadows. It’s one of the reasons I don’t often work from other people’s photographs — a photo may be the equivalent of a thousand words, but sometimes you need a bit more.

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