Early Work c.1952 - 1967
Early Work, c.1953-c.1961
I began making art when I was about age five. I remember lots of small drawings and paintings of copies of illustrations of pre-historic landscapes and animals from Life Magazine. I think I must have begun making art about age five when my cousin John Reed and his mother moved into my father’s home. Aunt Frances encouraged me through her own wide artistic and craft talents. Having been educated in a convent school in Ottawa, she was an expert at many things: sewing new clothing from cast-offs, embroidery, knitting, cake decoration, penmanship, small clay sculptures of imaginary castles, watercolour landscapes on tree fungus. John, who was about ten years older than me, also had a large influence. He could draw and paint, build and fly free-flight model airplanes, play chess, play Jazz music, ride racing bicycles and be cool.
CTS, 1961-1966
In 1961, my Aunt Lucienne arranged for me to become a student in the Art Department of Central Technical School. As well as the few mandatory academic high school subjects (which I regretfully tended to avoid), I studied many art subjects under about twelve art teachers.
The school’s philosophy and practice were a synthesis of John Ruskin’s philosophy of improving English graphic design and the teaching methods of the Bauhaus.
My training was largely toward graphic art: design, illustration, package design, typography, anatomy and colour interaction. I also studied figure drawing and painting, still life painting, art history, sculpture, printmaking, ceramics, museum rendering, scientific illustration and fine-art drawing and painting. The only subjects I did not enjoy or excel at were figure drawing and painting; perhaps, at age eleven or twelve, I was frightened by the models.
At CTS I discovered the grid in art, a Bauhaus invention; since then, the grid has regularly emerged in my art, sometimes like an albatross. In the early 1960s I learned about working in series from Michael Snow’s Walking Woman, and I now regularly work in this manner.
Independent Work, 1961-1966
During the five years I was an art student at CTS, I continued to make art independently. Some school projects began as assignments but evolved into something else.
For a while I became interested in pursuing a career in mosaic design and practice when CTS found me a summer job as a tile setter for the Con Art Commercial Mural Company; I worked on part of a large mural for a Catholic church in northern Ontario.
I did not complete my studies at CTS, even though I also attended the graduating class of the more advanced three-year art course for students that had already completed high-school. On the recommendation of my instructors, the Medical Illustration Department of the University of Toronto offered me a scholarship to study medical illustration. A few interviews and tours of the department confirmed in my intention to be a fine artist. When I later dropped out of art school for the last time, the school kindly found me a full-time job as a designer and apprentice steel engraver at MC Charters, a job I kept for about three months. The steel engraver’s craft was fascinating but much too stifling – just like medical illustration. After CTS, and despite drifting from job to job I made lots of art. I display several here. Less than two years later I moved to Mexico.
