UNews - Ontario College of Art

Lasting Images - Franklin Carmichael

trevor.kenney — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 20:51:47 +0000

Franklin Carmichael was born in Orillia, Ont. in 1890. He moved to Toronto to attend the Ontario College of Art and Design where he studied with academically trained painters such as William Cruickshank and George Reid.

Carmichael befriended Tom Thomson, accompanying him on weekend sketching trips and eventually the two shared a studio space. Carmichael was a founding member of both the Ontario Society of Painters in Watercolour and the Canadian Group of Painters, and taught at his alma mater from 1932 until his death in 1945.

Carmichael was a member of the Group of Seven – a collective of landscape painters, active from 1920 to 1933, whose works became closely linked to Canadian nationalism.

The Group's paintings were acclaimed as the first distinctly Canadian modernist art movement, and depicted the majesty of the forests, lakes and mountain peaks of the Canadian Shield region.

The members of the Group believed that by representing Canada's rugged wilderness with bold colours, stylized shapes and gestural brushstrokes, they could break from European conventions of painting and imbue their works with an essentially Canadian spirit.

This story first appeared in the October 2012 issue of the Legend. To see the full issue in a flipbook format, follow this link. For a look at the full U of L Art Collection, follow this link.

Franklin Carmichael, Untitled (Forest Interior), 1933. From the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Collection. Gift of an anonymous donor, 2002.

Franklin Carmichael, Untitled (Jack Pine Trees), 1940. From the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Collection. Gift of an anonymous donor, 2002.

Franklin Carmichael, Untitled (La Cloche Area Landscape), 1940. From the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Collection. Gift of an anonymous donor, 2002.

Exploring the art of Dennis Burton

trevor.kenney — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 17:45:50 +0000

Dennis Burton was born in Lethbridge, Alta. in 1933, and first explored painterly abstraction during his studies at the Ontario College of Art during the 1950s.

After practicing painting at both the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Southern California and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, Burton returned to Canada to work at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a senior graphic designer from 1957 to 1960.

Dennis Burton, Banshees, 1992. From the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Collection; Gift of I. Zucker, 1994

Throughout his career, Burton taught at art institutions in Toronto, Banff, Vancouver, and at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge. Though initially recognized for his abstract canvases, Burton rose to artistic fame in the mid-1960s with a controversial series of paintings of the female nude and undergarments. He continued to produce both figurative and abstract works into the 1990s.

Burton's work has been exhibited extensively across Canada and is housed in numerous public and private collections. The artist currently lives in Vancouver.

For a look at more of Burton's work, or any of the other 13,000-plus works in the U of L's collection, follow this link.

This story first appeared in the June 2012 issue of the Legend. For a look at the entire issue in flipbook format, follow this link.

Lasting Images - Eldon Garnet

trevor.kenney — Mon, 10 May 2010 17:45:13 +0000

Eldon Garnet is an internationally acclaimed Canadian artist known for a multidisciplinary approach to his work. Garnet's photographs in the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Collection explore the ideas of life and death in a sincere and surprising manner.

While some artists prefer to address mortality indirectly, Garnet embraces the idea and makes it a focal point of his work. He creates series of photographs that are aesthetically pleasing for their composition and form but contain images that read to be disturbing. The viewer becomes so drawn into the design aspects of Garnet's images that the content then becomes an unanticipated aftershock.

Garnet is fully aware of this effect and sees his images as an opportunity to, "give everyone what they want while quietly pushing them over an unexpected edge of aesthetic and social expectation."

Once the viewer addresses the content of the work, it is hard not to relate its meaning to the self or the immediate environment.

These works from Garnet's No series use elements – air, water, fire – while others in the same series use animals and the human body to portray meaning. The elements that are seen here can have many meanings attributed to them, some negative and some positive. What they all have in common is that they exist on a fine line between necessity and destruction, bringing the viewer to an interesting, and yet personal, dichotomy.

Garnet is also an accomplished writer, sculptor and filmmaker. He was the publisher and editor of Impulse magazine from the mid 1970s to the 1990s.

Garnet is currently teaching photography, public art and sculpture at the Ontario College of Art & Design.

Roz Jeffery is a Museum Studies Intern in the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ's Department of Art

UNews - Ontario College of Art

Lasting Images - Franklin Carmichael

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Exploring the art of Dennis Burton

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Lasting Images - Eldon Garnet

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