UNews - Porcupine Hills

Jim Coutts explores "home pain" and his artistic mission

trevor.kenney — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 20:42:07 +0000

When collectors are honest with themselves, they admit that there is neither rhyme nor reason to what they do. In fact they seldom think of themselves as collectors. From time to time they acquire paintings that appeal to them. When they have a few artworks they start to think – what is all this about?

It is only in retrospect that they manage to identify themes that prompted them to acquire in the first place – this is certainly my experience.

There is a German expression, "Heimweh," which translates as "home pain." It is more than home-sickness – it is the profound and lasting longing in the stranger to be home – a feeling that over the years gave much substance to works of art and song.

Margaret Shelton, Farm, 1981 Watercolour on paper | From the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Collection; Gift of Jim Coutts, 2010.

Part of the landscape you know as a youth travels with you – and part of you always remains in your home landscape. That was my experience of southwest Alberta – especially the Porcupine Hills. Fortunately I have now been able to return here.

The works that I've collected along the way usually reflect my "home pain." One day I lunched with a collector friend in Toronto who said, "There is a painting at the Godard Gallery you should see." I went to see it, liked it (in fact was haunted by it) and eventually bought it.

When I got the painting home I looked on the back of the canvas and saw the title – "Sanfois West of Nanton" by Barbara Ballachey. It was Timber Ridge in the Porcupine Hills – a scene I had seen a hundred times! It is a fine painting but it was the home pain that captured me.

I was fortunate to grow up in the 1950s in Nanton, Alta., with a mentor dedicated to art. Dorothy Dowhan culturally adopted me, and from the age of 12 dragged me along to art shows and concerts in Calgary. Those evening events were often held at the Coste House, a Calgary centre for graphic and performing arts. Later she gave me a small 1958 painting of West Dover, N.S., by John Cook. Soon, armed with that one possession and numerous mental images from years of having looked and looked, I slowly and hesitantly began to acquire art on my own.

I began to meet western artists like Joe Fafard and Janet Mitchell. Janet and I became friends. After acquiring several of her works, I talked her into letting me be her agent, because she found it impossible to set prices on her works – which were getting better and better, while she was selling them for less and less. I soon found myself befriending a number of Canadian dealers who educated and coached me on Canadian art history.

As Janet shared her ideas about art, I began looking at landscape differently and so many of the pieces I collected over the following 50 years were done by Prairie artists, struggling to capture space and light and the wonderful detail of the Canadian Prairies.

Ivan Eyre, Valley River, 2007 Acrylic on canvas | From the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Collection; Gift of Jim Coutts, 2010.

Janet's landscapes were sometimes called squiggles on a board – but were in fact highly imaginative and she got the prairies exactly right.

Business and politics would keep me travelling for decades. But along the way I made a wonderful discovery. Virtually every village in the world has at least one person drawing, painting, carving – sometimes you have to look hard, but they are there. While travelling I often visited them and began collecting works by local blacksmiths, carpenters, painters, sketchers and sculptors. And in recent years I've come home to discover first-class artists in Nanton, Cayley, Fort Macleod, High River and Claresholm.

So there it is. My "artistic mission" has been a modest but deeply satisfying one: just poking around, meeting some wonderful people and occasionally acquiring artworks I liked. The theme of place clearly seemed to arise again and again in works I acquired, as I tried to deal with the home pain I felt. As a near-neighbour of the U of L I suspect my home pain will be a little less intense now, knowing that these works will be right "at home" here in the Art Gallery of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge.

A sense of place

trevor.kenney — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 20:04:36 +0000

Born and raised in southern Alberta, Jim Coutts has been collecting art since he was 17. As the former secretary to two prime ministers, Coutts travelled extensively and looked at art around the world, but his collection has a clear western Canadian theme.

After recently donating more than 200 pieces to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Collection, Coutts paints his own picture of life on the Prairies.

Jim Coutts eyes the long, ruler-straight road approaching his Nanton property with a discerning gaze – analysing the qualities of available light, interpreting the natural contrast between the earth and the sky, and considering composition of the image in his mind's eye.

Jim Coutts, photo by Jaime Vedres.

"The grass blows a little in the wind, giving some movement to a hill in the distance, and the land just keeps drawing you out to it," says Coutts, describing an image from memory. "I find this space absolutely enchanting. Some people think it's boring because you drive and drive for hours and they feel there's nothing there, but there's a great deal there and it's the vastness and simplicity that makes it so hauntingly beautiful."

Born in High River and raised in Nanton, 80 kilometres south of Calgary, Coutts is as much a product of southern Alberta as the grasses that blanket the Porcupine Hills. Growing up in a rural community, Coutts remembers endlessly long summer days spent racing bicycles down the streets of his hometown.

"During the summer, I always had stuff to do. I was very busy – in my own mind at least," says Coutts, allowing nostalgia to creep in. "The thing about memory is that it improves over time, and events get better and better the more you remember them."

But the memory of his grandfather, W.H. (Bill) Allan, looking longingly at a homestead he'd given up, remained unchanged.

"As a young boy, I would go into his field with him in the summers," says Coutts. "We would walk over to the old homestead from that field, which was just across the road. He always told me he never should have given up that property and, although I didn't understand it, I could tell that it was a painful memory for him."

Allan was one of many settlers who, searching for a better life, travelled thousands of miles across Canada in the early years of the last century. He farmed a quarter section of land near Nanton before losing the property during the 1920s and moving his family into town. Visiting the property as a child resonated with Coutts, who felt an attachment to the land he couldn't explain at the time. He now believes the homestead provides him with a sense of place but is also symbolic of the difficulties of prairie life.

"We look at beautiful things and we see only the good," says Coutts. "We forget that our ancestors and our forebears stumbled and fell and picked themselves up and kept going. Part of our history is the history of struggle."

While crops sometimes failed, the prairie soil proved fertile ground for art and culture. At the age of 12, Coutts caught the attention of Dorothy Dowhan, a local newspaper editor with friends in the artistic community, and started visiting art galleries, theatres and even gardens as her guest.

"Dorothy took a great interest in young people and would spot individuals who were showing interest in wider subjects," says Coutts of the woman he describes as a mentor. "She had a lot of friends, and I met some very interesting people through her."

Respectful of its history, the new Coutts homestead faces west to the Porcupine Hills, foothills of the Canadian Rockies, which are often topped in snow even as the gardens bloom. The original buildings scattered across this sweep of prairie represent a coming home for this southern Alberta boy.

It was Dorothy who gave a then 17-year-old Coutts his first piece of art.

"Dorothy gave me a little oil by John Cook – who's still around and still painting – when I went to university," says Coutts, who hung the picture in his dorm room while completing a law degree at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta.

Armed with a single painting and an appreciation developed over years and years of looking, Coutts began buying art on his own.

"I'd been going to galleries for 10 years and I just kept looking," explains Coutts. "Toward the end of my university days I would splurge and buy a print for $50. Gradually I became a bit of a pack rat."

Collector is more accurate. Hesitant at first, Coutts soon began collecting with determination and ferocity, qualities he would demonstrate in his professional life as well.

"I studied law because I thought I could get a job when I finished," admits Coutts. "I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I was very interested in public life."

Admiring the progressive politics of provincial Liberal leader, Harper Prowse, Coutts entered the political scene in 1953 with a desire to affect change. Ten years later, Coutts was made secretary to Liberal Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson and was on the front lines of Canadian politics.

"I enjoyed being in the fray," says Coutts, who worked with Pearson for three years before going to Harvard ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ to complete his MBA. "Politics is always drama. There's always something happening and it seemed important but it was also a kind of entertainment."

Canadians saw profound change in those three short years: medicare, the pension plan, old-age security, the National Economic Council and the new Canadian flag were all introduced.

"It was a very short period when a great deal of good was done for this country," says Coutts proudly.

After completing his MBA, Coutts started a consulting firm where he was working when Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau appointed him principal secretary in 1975. He worked with Trudeau for six years before leaving to run in a byelection, which he lost by 200 votes.

Homestead photos by Andy Hakin.

Through it all, Coutts diligently continued collecting art.

"You get to like things and think you need things," says Coutts. "You also train your eye so that while once in a while you buy a bad picture, generally, you buy things that you like and most are really good. In the beginning I didn't believe there was any theme to it, but over the years I acquired a good deal of western Canadian art."

The art in the Coutts collection is united by its subject matter: endless skies over empty fields, faded grain elevators contrasted against brilliant sunsets, soaring birds floating in wild winds, all depicting the variety of the southern Alberta landscape.

Understanding that the images in his collection represented more than an affinity for prairie scenery, Coutts returned to southern Alberta in 1988 and reclaimed his grandfather's homestead. With a keen eye for detail, Coutts set to work, turning the soil once broken by his grandfather into a prairie garden and bringing his own vision for the property to life.

"It seems to me the more attractive and exciting and imaginative and creative a place is in your mind, the more painful it is to be away from it," says Coutts, who is grateful for the opportunity to return each summer to the community he knew as a child.

The new homestead is very much an expression of Coutts himself. Set on the vast, flat canvas of the Prairies, buildings are scattered across the land – the original homestead; a chicken house, now a guest suite; a barn; and an old ice house and granary, moved from Coutts's mother's neighbouring property. Each structure provides a seemingly effortless organization to the landscape where gardens flourish, and the plots and paths are carefully carved in such a way to welcome visitors and encourage exploration.

His approach has been bold and the transformation remarkable, but Coutts has not forgotten the struggles of life on the Prairies.

"When you look at the place now with the gardens, grasses and trees and the beauty depicted in the photographs and paintings, that's one thing," says Coutts. "But for many years, for those who came first, it was a very difficult and painful place to live."

Respectful of its history, the new Coutts homestead faces west to the Porcupine Hills, foothills of the Canadian Rockies, which are often topped in snow even as the gardens bloom. The original buildings scattered across this sweep of prairie represent a coming home for this southern Alberta boy.

"A piece of you will always stay wherever it is that you came from, and you also carry a piece of that landscape with you," explains Coutts. "Fortunately, I've been able to return to the place that means so much to me."

This story first appeared in SAM Magazine. For a look at SAM in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Collaborating to advance water research

trevor.kenney — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:00:29 +0000

By studying water issues locally, ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge water researchers are discovering fundamental principles about water systems and their management that bolster a global body of knowledge.

Lars Brinkmann, a PhD candidate in the Department of Biological Sciences, is the inaugural recipient of a $30,000 fellowship – the largest individual student award endowed at the U of L. The fellowship is made possible by energy company Nexen Inc. and their initial investment of $300,000 which, when matched through the Province of Alberta's Access to the Future Fund, will establish a $600,000 endowment for graduate scholarships and fellowships in water research at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge.

Brinkmann is exploring how mercury concentrations in fish are affected by the food web. He explains that even in seemingly pristine bodies of water, traces of mercury often threaten the health of humans and other animals in the ecosystem.

"Mercury is a serious problem because it's a very potent neurotoxin, and it has very adverse effects in human adults. What's even worse is that at very low concentrations, it still has a very bad effect on developing fetuses," Brinkmann explains.

The heavy metal is a byproduct of some industrial processes. Even water systems nowhere near a point of contamination can contain mercury, as it is transported by rain and wind.

Mercury becomes most concentrated at the top of the food web. Predatory fish can contain very toxic levels of mercury and can be dangerous for humans to consume. However, the concentration is affected by what those fish eat and how they allocate energy to survive (like spawning, movement and growth of the body), which makes concentrations in ecosystems quite variable.

Brinkmann hopes to find out why the food web is causing so much variation by studying the fish in the South Saskatchewan River Basin and determining how their energy budgets relate to mercury concentration. His work suggests that it's not the size of a fish that minimizes concentration, but rather its rate of growth; fish that grow quickly tend to have less mercury in their tissues.

Brinkmann's supervisor, Dr. Joseph Rasmussen, a professor in the U of L's Department of Biological Sciences and a Canada Research Chair (Aquatic Systems), explains that the doctoral student's research is filling an important gap in the literature. Most of the research on mercury toxicology hasn't dealt with food web interactions.

"It treats food web components as generic, but it's hugely variable from one system to another," Rasmussen says.

In recent years, emission controls have limited the amount of mercury that industry produces, but it continues to pose an environmental threat. It's becoming more important to find ways to manage the pollutant once it's in the system, Rasmussen explains.

"It's good to promote practices that reduce emissions, but you can't control it like a tap. However, you can manage the system on the other end and, say, manage our fisheries in such a way that we reduce mercury in fish."

When it comes to Alberta's spring systems – the points at which groundwater comes to the surface – even less is known. That's why a team of U of L researchers and partners is studying the natural springs as a strategy to learn more about groundwater and ensure the resource is used sustainably in the future. But at the moment, scientists don't understand the role springs play in local habitats.

"One might imagine that because springs are relatively scarce, their ecological value might be limited. Conversely, they provide unique environments, and it's likely that there may be some unique organisms that rely on them," explains Dr. Stewart Rood, a U of L Board of Governors Research Chair in Environmental Science and 2008 Killam Research Fellowship recipient.

Rood has been collaborating with Dr. Abe Springer, a professor with Northern Arizona ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, to better understand the province's springs. The Alberta Springs Project – modelled after Springer's and colleagues' Southwestern U.S. springs studies – was created when Springer visited the U of L as its first Fulbright Scholar in water research in 2007.

The Alberta Springs Project will investigate springs throughout southern Alberta, including those of the Porcupine Hills region, an outcrop of foothills that is not directly linked to the Rocky Mountain zones. In the areas with springs, the topographical conditions allow for groundwater to come to the surface and create a diverse array of springs.

The project is broad. In addition to inventorying the springs, researchers are studying their hydrology, water chemistry and aquatic and riparian ecology. They hope to find out, among other things, how springs are impacted by seasonal and climatic changes, how the type of spring affects the area's biology and how groundwater relates to surface water. The research initiative will also compare the spring systems in Alberta, Arizona and Wisconsin.

Eventually, the information will help Alberta plan for the future.

"As surface water resources become overextended in a region, the next source of water which is typically tapped is groundwater stored in aquifers," Springer says. "Alberta is in a unique position of not yet having significantly tapped the extensive groundwater resources of the province, so there is still time to plan for better management of them and minimize or mitigate any potential future impact to aquifers or springs from groundwater use."

The Alberta Springs Project has secured $200,000 in funding over four years from the Imperial Oil Foundation, and it has attracted researchers from across North America.

"One emphasis of this project is to bring together individuals with shared interests in order to better understand what we know and don't know and to develop a more systematic strategy for studying and inventorying springs," Rood says.

UNews - Porcupine Hills

Jim Coutts explores "home pain" and his artistic mission

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A sense of place

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Collaborating to advance water research

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