Montreal at Night by MaryAnn Camps.

Much of Canada seemed delirious with pride and surprise after viewing the magical photographs taken of their hometowns from space by astronaut Chris Hadfield during his recent around-the-world again and again tour. If you watch CBC national news, you saw Hatfield’s photos almost daily last month. Each night there was a different photo, like some new treasure from Ali Baba’s cave. Well, if you liked those snaps, you will undoubtedly love the aerial view paintings of cities done by Ottawa artist MaryAnn Camps.

There is an exhibition of Camps’s work called Street Light on view at Cube Gallery until June 30. Her renditions of such cities as Montreal, Paris, Tokyo, and Mexico City, as seen from on high, are glorious. These are not just paintings of aerial photographs; they are paintings that transform aerial views into living, breathing entities.

That is what art is all about: the ability to transform. And that is what Camps has done.

Camps’s night-time street scenes are less successful, especially those done with a soft focus. The paintings with sharply defined lines, those showing Wellington Street landmarks such as GCTC, Herb and Spice, and even Cube Gallery, are the best of the lot. These paintings show nighttime in all its grit, mystery, and danger. Humans are reduced to black figures moving, ghostlike, in the shadows or pressed against shop windows glowing from interior lighting. The more blurry streetscape paintings seem too cuddly and not at all spooky. There’s no drama, no mystery.

Queen Street at Night by MaryAnn Camps

For Camps, our enjoyment of night in the city is all about the kind of lighting used.

“In Street Light people are defined by the light and dazzle of the city night,” Camps says in an artist’s statement. “Subtle light spills from some windows, blinding glare blasts from others; diffused glow from some street lights, harsh light from others. It can be colourful, flashing, clashing, glittering signs layered with traffic lights and light from traffic. How we light our cities has a tremendous impact on how we feel about being there.”

Camps spent 20 years working as a graphic artist in Ottawa, Toronto, and Kingston. In 2005, she decided to become a full-time painter. Since then, she has been in many group shows in Ottawa. She is a definite talent to watch.

On her website, Camps has many examples of her earlier abstract paintings. Check them out. They are dazzling, resembling aerial views of irregularly shaped fields in brilliant colours. Think of what Hadfield might have photographed from space in the daytime.

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Let’s hope that when the end of the world comes, Ed Burtynsky will still be around with his camera to make the hellfire and brimstone look pretty and less scary.

Edward Burtynsky, SOCAR Oil Fields #3, Baku, Azerbaijan, 2006. Chromogenic color print. Photograph © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto / Howard Greenberg & Bryce Wolkowitz, New York.

Burtynsky is one of Canada’s most celebrated art photographers. He is a favourite of the National Gallery of Canada and top art venues abroad. He has won prestigious awards. Chances are, you can’t afford to buy one of his prints.

This photographer found fame shooting places most of us try to avoid: Toxic waste ponds, garbage dumps, abandoned quarries and, as we see with his newly opened exhibition at the Canadian Museum of Nature, everything to do with oil. We see oil being pumped out of the ground, refined and used by all kinds of vehicles. We also see the polluting graveyards of all those vehicles that burned oil.

Burtynsky’s images simultaneously repel and attract. He leaves us feeling guilty for admiring the brilliant sheen on some turquoise or scarlet pond that would kill any living thing that tries to taste those polluted waters.

And so it is with Oil, the exhibition that has been travelling the globe since its opening in 2009 at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. and has just landed in Ottawa. The 56 large-scale images are on view at the nature museum until Sept. 2.

In Oil, we see heaps of trashed helicopters that look like some dead, giant insects. We get a bird’s eye view of layer upon layer of shimmering, curving ribbons of steel and asphalt that comprise freeways filled with gas-guzzling, smog-producing cars.

Burtynsky claims that when it comes to his art, he is apolitical. That does not mean, however, that his art is perceived by the rest of us as apolitical. Is there, in fact, anything more political these days than oil, whether the topic be pipelines, the oilsands, or most every conflict in the Middle East?

Frankly, it is impossible to view Oil and not feel queasy about what we are doing to the planet. Who can be unmoved by scenes of barefoot Bangladeshi workers standing in oily muck while recycling oil? And closer to home, we can only squirm with discomfort as we see the massive, messy rape of the northern Alberta landscape in the effort to claim and process the oilsands.

Viewing Burtynsky’s images is a guilty pleasure. His images have a seductive aesthetic. They are also powerful and thought-provoking. If you only go to one art exhibition this summer, go see Burtynsky.

Edward Burtynsky: Oil. At the Canadian Museum of Nature until September 2, 2013.
$4, plus museum admission (free with admission for children under 12). 

~ Paul Gessell

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Richard Nigro begins an interview about his art by saying: “Just let me put some fish in the fridge before I talk to you.”

Nigro is, of course, one of Ottawa’s more famous chefs, currently running Richard’s Hintonburg Kitchen, after starring for many years at Juniper Kitchen and Wine Bar.

The Cowboy by Richard Nigro

Nigro is also a visual artist who is about to have his first solo show in 15 years. That will be at Wallack Galleries, on Bank Street, June 6-22. The show is titled Cowboy. Clown. Princess. and will include about 15 photographs, each 40 inches by 40 inches, showing ghost-like children at play. Actually, the images look like staged performances from the Twilight Zone. They are haunting, ethereal, and set the imagination racing.

The children’s play is captured, not with a digital camera, but with a Mamiya 6 X 7 medium-format camera. (For you youngsters, that means a camera that uses film.) A slow shutter speed is employed. The models are asked to move. The result is a blurred image, like in a dream, or like an image in the Francis Bacon paintings Nigro so loves.

“There’s a certain element of chaos or chance” in this kind of technique, Nigro says. That uncertainty gets his adrenaline rushing.

Back in the 1980s, Nigro was a rising star in the Ottawa art world. A 1981 exhibition, Of Intimate Silence, at SAW Gallery riled the police because a man in some photographs “might” be having an erection. Charges were threatened but not laid. SAW posted warning signs. Ah, those were more innocent times.

The Clown by Richard Nigro

Nigro stopped having exhibitions about 15 years ago. “I didn’t stop making work. I stopped exhibiting. Part of it was an error – I thought I would make more money doing what I’m doing now, cooking, rather than making art.”

There was another reason: “An underlying sense that I wasn’t connecting to the great art community; there was a lack of appreciation and criticism of the work I was doing. I found that very, very frustrating.”

Well, Nigro has decided to relaunch his art career at Wallack Gallery.

The works in Cowboy. Clown. Princess. were created between the years 1987 and 1998. Some of those works Nigro hopes to include in an illustrated book to be called Fables for Children After the End of History.

Expect to hear a lot more of Nigro, the artist, in coming months.

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Curators from the National Gallery of Canada began scouring the globe a few years ago to find, in the words of one of them, “great” contemporary art.

Richard Bell Life on a Mission, 2009 Acrylic on canvas National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa Purchased 2011 © Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery Photo © NGC

The only other ingredient beyond “greatness,” according to the gallery’s chief aboriginal curator Greg Hill, was that the artists had to be “indigenous,” a term generally referring to the original people of a particular geographic area who, over the centuries, have been swamped by colonists to the point of becoming a minority.

In the Americas, indigenous refers generally to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people. But there are indigenous minorities in Scandinavia, Taiwan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, and other countries.

Once examples of “great” indigenous contemporary art were identified, Hill and his team selected the best of the best and created the newly opened exhibition Sakahan, the largest show ever staged by the National Gallery in its history. Sakahan fills the usual prime temporary exhibition space on the main floor, expands into rooms in the contemporary wing of the building and fills the second floor exhibition space normally displaying temporary shows of prints, photographs or drawings.

There is no overall theme to the show. That gave the curators the freedom to concentrate on the truly “great” and not feel restricted to selecting art that fit into a particular thematic box.

That tactic was wise. The show is indeed great. The “wow factor” is higher than anything the gallery has done since Diana Nemiroff stopped curating contemporary shows there many years ago.

Rebecca Belmore's Fringe is part of the new exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased 2011 Photo © NGC

Among the Canadian highlights is Rebecca Belmore’s photograph called Fringe. A nude aboriginal woman lies on a mat. On her back, a horrific looking scar travels from her left shoulder to her right hip. Blood-red lines (beaded strings, actually) drip from the scar.

In this one scene, Belmore has encapsulated the history of violence against aboriginal people, especially aboriginal women. The beadwork is a nod to traditional aboriginal handicraft but the medium – photography – is very much a contemporary, Western form of expression.

Similar themes related to violence and colonialism and marginalization do run through many of the artworks from around the world, from Australia to Lapland.

The wow factor is also high with the photographs by Maori artist Fiona Pardington from New Zealand. She has photographed the life-casts of the heads of some Maori and other South Pacific indigenous men that were created between 1837 and 1840 under the orders of French explorer Jules-Sebastien-Cesar Dumont d’Urville.

By chance, the artist discovered a trove of these heads — some of her own ancestors — at a Paris museum in 2007. The resulting photographs of these heads are simultaneously horrifying and hypnotic and definitely a reminder of the colonial era when indigenous peoples were treated more like wild animal specimens than humans.

Two Ottawa artists are in the exhibition. There is a Jeff Thomas photograph from a series he did spoofing the statue of Samuel de Champlain on Nepean Point. And there are two drawings by Ottawa-based Inuit artist Annie Pootoogook, one a self-portrait lying down and another unusually large one for her (about 3 metres by 1.5 metres) showing a scene in Cape Dorset of Inuit shoppers peering into a large freezer in a grocery store. That scene naturally makes one think of that old joke about a salesman who was so skilled he could sell “a refrigerator to an Eskimo.” These drawings are two of the most technically skilled I have seen Pootoogook do. She has had a rough patch the last few years, basically living on the street. Let’s hope she gets back to a stable life and lots of drawing.

Sakahan continues at the National Gallery until Sept. 2.

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So there I was at the Bytown Museum savouring local history. I was fascinated by the plaster cast made from the hand of the very dead Thomas D’Arcy McGee after his assassination on Sparks Street April 7, 1868. I marvelled at the brass clock hand, almost a metre in length, that graced the Victoria Tower of Parliament before the original buildings were destroyed by fire Feb. 3, 1916. And then there was the slide show of Mexican Day of the Dead festivities.

©MUSÉE BYTOWN MUSEUM. Photo: G. Iddon.

Now, why, you may wonder, was such a slide show doing at a museum dedicated to celebrating the history of Canada’s capital? Before answering, take note there were more, many more, inappropriate objects, all of them Mexican, mere steps away from displays on Col. John By, engineer of the Rideau Canal, and Joseph Montferrand, the legendary Ottawa River raftsman whose surname was once proposed by Quebec bureaucrats as the moniker for the amalgamated city of Aylmer-Hull-Gatineau.

Along with the slideshow, there was a cornucopia of Mexican trinkets: contemporary knock-offs of masks used in ancient dances, embroidery, textiles, photos of indigenous people and text panels boasting of the increased trade relationship between Canada and Mexico. These words and objects are all part of a new Bytown exhibition, lasting almost a year, called Mexico Fantastico! (The exclamation mark is courtesy of the Bytown, not me.)

Now, I have nothing against Mexico. In fact, I spend part of every year there. I love Mexican art and crafts. A large percentage of my time in Mexico is spent visiting the country’s many wonderful museums, including some specializing in folk art and quality handicrafts. Every visitor to Mexico City should stop at the Museo de Arte Popular. It is a real gem and elevates gaudily painted wooden monsters called alebrijes into fascinating cultural touchstones.

©MUSÉE BYTOWN MUSEUM. Photo: G. Iddon.

Simply put, Mexico Fantastico! is not fantastico. It resembles a low-end souvenir shop at the Mexico City airport or a display at a trade show designed to lure package tourists to Mexican beaches. All that is missing is a draw for a free bottle of tequila.

In a May 3 communique, the Bytown’s executive director, Robin Etherington, seemed to anticipate some head-scratching provoked by the Mexican exhibition: “Etherington explains the reason for this exhibition in a community museum is because the Mexican community is a vibrant part of the Ottawa community that is comprised of a number of significant groups from around the world. Also, Ottawa is the Capital of Canada and its diplomatic centre that brings together international cultures and ideas to enhance the City of Ottawa and enriches the learning opportunities of our young people and deepens our appreciation for Ottawa and Canada’s crucial place in the world.”  She adds that “the Bytown Museum’s mandate is the history of Ottawa and that entails the various ethnic groups and world cultures that make up Ottawa. It is the museum’s distinct honour to partner with the Embassy of Mexico and the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Gatineau to present to our community people and travelling visitors a fun exhibition to enjoy and learn about México and Ottawa.’”

How do you say “long-winded claptrap” in Spanish?

What’s next? An exhibition on ethical manufacturers in Bangladesh? The joys of surfing in Indonesia? How does that all fit with Lady Minto’s 1900-era elegant black gown tucked away in one corner of the museum?

The Bytown Museum, like most small museums, has little money to spend on exhibitions. Ordinarily, the museum does a magnificent job with a tiny budget.
Embassies, even when paying most or all costs, struggle to find venues to showcase exhibitions of art and artifacts from back home. Galerie Montcalm, Gatineau’s leading art gallery, occasionally does so-called “embassy” shows. The Canadian Museum of Civilization has developed close ties with state museums in other countries. But Ottawa’s galleries and museums are generally more reluctant to become part of the embassy circuit. Evidently, not the Bytown Museum.

The Mexican embassy deserves credit for many programs over the years introducing its country’s art, music and other cultural products to Canadians. In fact, the Mexicans are one of the more active embassies in this field. However, Mexico Fantastico! is not what we have come to expect.

Dear old Col. By must be spinning in his grave as he listens to the endless recorded mariachi music playing nearby.

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Some names are familiar, Eve being one. But others are less known and, centuries later, still influence the way women are viewed and treated in Christian countries.

Lot's Daughters (Clare, Emma). Photo by Olivia Johnston

Eve, Jael, Tamar, and Susannah are all women found in Old Testament Bible stories. Eve, of course, is the world’s original temptress, supposedly responsible for all men’s sins and for all the pain women must bear in childbirth. Not exactly a role model. The other women were raped, abused, maligned, and treated like chattel.

Ottawa photographer Olivia Johnston has created a body of work, titled Fallen, in which contemporary women pose as these various Biblical characters. The work will be exhibited at La Petite Mort Gallery from April 26 to May 2. The vernissage is April 26 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

I received, online, an advance peek at some of the portraits. They are haunting and powerful. But one can expect nothing less from Johnston, a Carleton University art history student who is fast becoming one of Ottawa’s more intriguing photo-artists. The following is a partial transcript of an email interview with Johnston:

ARTFUL BLOGGER: What was the inspiration for you to embark on this photo series?

OLIVIA JOHNSTON: I have always had an interest in women’s and gender issues, and my interest in this merged with thoughts of historical art and the Bible when I began seriously studying art history.I recall a moment when I was sitting in class, looking at a print depicting the Virgin Mary. I began to imagine a scenario where, on her deathbed, she had sudden doubts about the existence of a Christian God.

The women of the Bible are presented to us in the context of the men in the Bible, so their voices are effectively silenced. I began to imagine who these women of the Bible might have been. What kind of women would they have been? Who would they have loved? What were their everyday concerns? How did they deal with the harsh and unforgiving culture in which they lived?

Jephthah's Daughter (Nancy). Photo by Olivia Johnston.

AB: What kinds of instructions did you give to your models? Were they asked to assume a certain look or a certain pose?

OJ: I instruct my models, but gently; each sitter brings themselves to the shoot. For these images, my sitters knew that they were portraying characters, and had read the stories of their respective characters before the shoot.

Despite the fact that my models are depicting characters here, I brought as much of my models’ own physical presence into the image as possible. Consequently, these images are a curious blend between the stories in the Bible, my literal and visual interpretation of those stories, and all of the emotion, preconceived notions, personal interpretations, and everyday concerns that my sitter brings to the shoot.

AB: The photographs portray women that, to me, echo Old Masters paintings yet the women simultaneously look contemporary. Was this your intention?

OJ: I’ve always had a great deal of admiration for works by the Old Masters, and my studies in Art History have definitely influenced my aesthetic. The majority of Biblical artwork was not created in contemporary society, and so I think it is important to reference the history of these images when recreating them.

Historical artwork plays such a fundamental role in our society’s understanding and interpretation of art. By referencing these works, I can tap into people’s subconscious knowledge, and contextualize my own images in historical art. However, it is also extremely important to contemporize these stories so their significance is not lost on modern audiences. In creating these images, I was very conscious of their historical references, but also of maintaining their relevance for modern audiences.

AB: Does the Bible still influence the way women are seen today in Western society?

OJ: In my opinion, yes; the Bible is still studied by an enormous number of people and its word is still taken as unquestionable truth by many. Consequently, this text cannot help but affect people’s views and beliefs, including their views and beliefs about women.

This series’ intention is to highlight the female characters who are present in the Bible, to re-contextualize their stories, and to push the viewer to question the presence and influence of these stories on society at large. More generally, it is important to acknowledge and understand the impact of any historical influence on a society that is striving for social progress.

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Big banks have taken a beating recently for importing foreign workers to steal the jobs of Canadians. So, for a change of pace, let me say something positive about one of those big banks: TD Bank Group.

The bank we once knew as Toronto-Dominion began acquiring artwork in the 1960s. In 1967, Canada’s Centennial, the bank started collecting Inuit art. Thankfully, the bank is still collecting and you can see some of its recent star acquisitions in the ground floor lobby of the National Arts Centre in an exhibition titled Inuit Ullumi: Inuit Today.

The exhibition is part of the NAC’s Northern Scene, which officially continues from April 25 to May 4, although many of the art shows associated with this multi-venue extravaganza are already running and will continue after the festival officially ends.

Face Transforming and Singing, by Annie Pootoogook

The TD show truly gives us Inuit art of “today.” There is a mixture of sculptures and drawings, but these are not your traditional scenes of hunters, mothers, and mythological creatures. Instead, we see a stone sculpture of a young man listening to his MP3 player and very realistic looking domestic scenes from the likes of Ottawa-based Annie Pootoogook and the very “in” Dorset-based artist Shuvinai Ashoona.

Many of the artists in the TD show are also part of the far larger and more spectacular exhibition called Dorset Seen at Carleton University Art Gallery. Participating artists include the aforementioned Pootoogook and Ashoona, plus such other Inuit art stars as Tim Pitsiulak and Ovilu Tunnillie.

Both of these exhibitions demonstrate how contemporary Inuit artists are increasingly daring to show, not just an idealized Arctic, but a land which like the rest of the world watches television, drives motorized vehicles and has social problems related to family violence, substance abuse, and other ills.

One Northern Scene exhibition in the Firestone Gallery at the Ottawa Art Gallery is called Takushurnaituk: Things Never Seen Before. This a sculpture exhibition built around one large stone work in the Firestone Collection called Ijitualik (One-eyed Figure) by Aisa Qumaaluk Sivuaraapik from Puvirnituq in northern Quebec. All the other works in the exhibition are borrowed from other collections and are unusual examples of sculptures from the same region.

Down the hall at the Ottawa Art Gallery is an art rental office, which also stages exhibitions and currently has a solo show by photographer Barry Pottle, an Inuit man originally from Labrador but now living in Ottawa. Pottle is one of the rising stars of the Inuit art world. His photographs juxtapose the old and the new, creating scenes, for example, of traditional Inuit ulu knives arranged in a still life motif with shiny silver tin cans from a supermarket.

Cape Dorset at Night, by Itee Pootoogook.

These are just some of the many art exhibitions around the city linked to Northern Scene. The shows offer the next best thing to an actual visit to the Arctic and, for that, we can thank companies like TD, who may offer ridiculously low rates on savings accounts but do spend some of the millions of dollars wrung from your hard-earned cash on some superb art we can all enjoy.

Visit Northern Scene for event information. Most of the art exhibitions are free except for those at the National Gallery of Canada and other national museums.

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By Paul Gessell

City Hall, Moscow, 2012. Photo by Leslie Hossack.

There is one thing I really, really want for Christmas: Moscow City Hall.

I’m not referring to the actual building but the cunningly surreal photograph of the structure by Ottawa photographer Leslie Hossack. The photo is part of a smart new show that opened Dec. 13, entitled Moscow Evidence, at Michael Gennis Gallery. The exhibition is by four local women photographers who collectively go by the name Studio 255.

Hossack’s work is definitely my favourite. First, she photographed some splendid examples of Stalinist architecture in Moscow. They include city hall, the Bolshoi Theatre, a swimming stadium, and other familiar Moscow landmarks.

Then, in what she calls “post-production” – a term some of us call “Photoshopping” – Hossack has removed cars, people, and flower pots from surrounding streets, as well as signs of air-conditioning and other modern additions to the buildings’ exteriors, and almost anything that was never part of the original architect’s plans.

The result is an eerie spareness to these portraits of buildings. They are so uncluttered and precise that they look like architectural drawings rather than photographs.

You can’t help but be drawn into these images. You stare and stare and feel a touch uneasy. You know that something is not quite right. But what is not quite right? In short: They are too perfect. They have been transformed from the real to the surreal. Moscow, I’m sure, has never looked better.

Kudrinskaya, The Seven Sisters, Moscow, 2012. Photo by Abigail Gossage.

Hossack and her three colleagues in Studio 255 travelled together to Moscow last June. They roomed at the same hotel but every morning, each headed in a different direction, each on a photographic mission. Barbara Bolton was off to create images of ghostly doorways, Abigail Gossage shot Stalinist skyscrapers, and Patricia Wallace sought out onion-domed Orthodox churches.

The foursome has been operating as Studio 255 since 2007. They have travelled together to Paris, Berlin, and Moscow and they have jointly exhibited their works from all three cities.

Their mentor and tutor is Michael Tardioli, the founder of the School for the Photographic Arts: Ottawa. Tardioli curated the exhibition Moscow Evidence.

Some Russian diplomats attended the recent opening of the show on Dec. 14. They joyfully pointed out buildings on view that had served them as home, school, or workplace.

Publicity materials describe the members of Studio 255 as “retired from demanding professional careers.” That’s a kindly term akin to the French euphemism describing women of a “certain age.” Indeed, there is a maturity and serenity to their photographs that is often lacking in the work of younger people with far less life experience.

The foursome has not yet pinpointed the next city they will tackle. Their choices are not made quickly. Tardioli has instilled in them the lesson that they must do extensive research on any place they plan to visit and photograph so that they arrive with a detailed gameplan.

As for Hossack, she is off to Kosovo in May as part of the Canadian Forces’ military art program. I’m sure she will return home with photographs I’ll want next year for Christmas.

Moscow Evidence is on display at Michael Gennis Gallery, 416 Richmond Rd., until Jan. 13.

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By Paul Gessell

Brandon McVittie, Los Mercados Bailan, oil on canvas; 36 x 36 in.

Brandon McVittie is probably best known as the former co-owner of the much missed Artguise, a Bank Street art gallery and shop selling artists’ supplies from 1996 to 2010. Artguise wisely took chances on emerging artists of the day, including Kristy Gordon, Juan Carlos Noria, and Amy Thompson, and in the process went a long way in developing a market in Ottawa for new collectors to acquire the work of young, developing artists.

But McVittie is also an accomplished artist himself. His latest exhibition, Newstalgia, runs from Dec. 6 to 24 at Wall Space Gallery. McVittie is enamoured with the 1940s and so he has taken the themes and aesthetics of that period and added his own contemporary touch to make the old look new.

McVittie was recently interviewed by The Artful Blogger:

When I see some of your images of soldiers or partiers, I can’t help but hear the Andrews Sisters singing boogie woogie in the background. Are you trying to recreate a 1940s aesthetic in these paintings or is something else at play?
There definitely is a 1940s vibe to many of the genre pieces in Newstalgia. Not only can this be identified by the attire of the figures in these paintings, but also with how the compositions have been rendered stylistically and in the colour palette that has been employed. There is the intention that they look and feel vintage while being iconic. The ’40s had such profound influence on the modern era.

Your website more or less says you are trying to make old images new. Why this fascination with the past?
History as a subject has always intrigued me. In fact, all aspects of the bygone interest me and not simply things that are “Art Historical” by nature. The past is hugely important and too often overlooked despite it literally being comprised of EVERYTHING that might serve to inspire us. I am of the feeling that nothing is completely new. Hence, art trends are bound to be rediscovered and, in turn, reincorporated.

If you could hop into a time machine, what era would you like to visit?
I would accept the offer of a test drive in a time machine in a heart beat! It is fair to admit that I’m a huge fan of Terry Gilliam’s film Time Bandits. So, if I could hop in a time machine, I can promise you that I’d rack up some mileage…and good past times. The 1940s notwithstanding, I would visit many eras past and indeed future too. I’d need to see the Sphinx prior to its rhinoplasty issues, Pompeii before the lava mishap, Leonardo painting that ‘guy’ Mona, Van Gogh with two ears… and all stops in between and forward. It’s a time machine after all! I’d gas it up and have it sparkling upon return, of course.

Brandon McVittie, That Guy Lombardo, oil on canvas, 20in x 26in

Your landscapes and your paintings of industrial workers seem idealized and romanticized. There is a dream-like quality to them. Are you a romantic at heart?
These idealized and romanticized qualities to my paintings are my homage to forgone style(s). Does this make me a Romantic? I do have a fondness for European Romantic era landscapes: Pastoral skies that are turbulent, back lit, or immense can pack a stirring wallop. I have never actually been “confirmed” a Romantic though. Are there membership fees? I would probably be more of a Nostalgic….

Are your paintings strictly from imagination or do you use actual scenes, people, or photographs as a starting point?
Despite using imagination in constructing themes and settings, my process employs all sorts of references when building a painting. These have been in the form of photos, magazines, posters, old books, and various clippings. Luckily this new fad “the Internet” has helped me to recycle quite a bit of paper chaos that I used to try to organize and file. My initial step when planning a painting is to lay out a collection of visual references that I will then employ as the real starting point, which is a drawing on paper. Once realized, this would be the preliminary to painting on canvas or panel.

Are their certain artists whose work has influenced you?
Yes, indeed, but it is a vast list. I admire Eakins, Sargent, Lady Butler Elizabeth Thomson, and N.C. Wyeth to mention a very few. I continue to be influenced by works from the past because that is my cup of tea. I do tend to gravitate toward late 19th and early 20th century schools of art when taking in a museum collection or skimming coffee table art history books. I am not exclusive to appreciating only painters of the past though, as there are countless contemporary artists hailing from near and far that never cease to impress.

And lastly, do you miss Artguise?
If I had a nickel for every time I have been asked this…I would have a bunch of nickels. I’m happy to answer that Artguise Gallery provided me with a lifetime of terrific experiences and opportunities. It was a really fun enterprise. I’m very proud of it. I was still in my twenties when my business partner Jason Vaughan and myself opened the doors. When we closed up shop in 2010 I was in my forties. I met loads of wonderful people because of it. And if we are discussing history, I often catch myself thinking ‘where did all of that time go’? Artguise attracted many talented artists and art enthusiasts as a meeting place in its years of business. I am moved by the number of people who have told me how sorry they were to see it go. That is such a validating sentiment. Perhaps one day I’ll paint a nostalgic piece inspired by memories of Artguise, but I think it should feature dogs with cigars playing poker as a sub theme…it was in some ways a surreal spot.

Newstalgia is at Wall Space Gallery, 358 Richmond Rd., from Dec. 6 to 24.

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By Paul Gessell

Margaret Watkins, "Still life - Shower Hose, 1919." Gelatin silver print, 21.2 x 15.9 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased 1984 with the assistance of a grant from the Government of Canada under the terms of the Cultural Property Export and Import Act.

A long forgotten Canadian artist, Margaret Watkins, has been resurrected from obscurity with a large, impressive exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada of her early 20th century photographs.

You can be forgiven if you have not heard of Watkins before. She has largely been forgotten for almost a century. And she would have remained forgotten if not for the efforts of a friendly neighbour in the city of Glasgow, where Watkins died November 10, 1969. More on that later.

Watkins was born November 8, 1884, in Hamilton. As a young woman, she moved to the United States in 1908 to seek her fortune, eventually settling in New York City. By the 1920s she had become a celebrated photographer who exhibited extensively and was profiled glowingly in Vanity Fair magazine. She specialized in portraits, arty advertisements, and still life scenes that echoed the “cubist” and “modernist” styles popular in the 1920s.

She was also known for transforming mundane objects from the kitchen or bathroom into carefully constructed art objects. The title of the National Gallery exhibition of about 60 images is Domestic Symphonies. That’s a reference to the manner in which she could elevate the ordinary into the divine.

Her photograph “Still Life: Shower Hose 1919″ shows an old-fashioned shower hose looped around a towel rack. It is a perfect example of the way Watkins used light, lines, and geometric compositions to create the perfect picture.

Margaret Watkins, "Academic Nude - Tower of Ivory, June 1924." Palladium print, 21.2 x 16 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased 1984 with the assistance of a grant from the Government of Canada under the terms of the Cultural Property Export and Import Act.

The achievements of Watkins were remarkable for two main reasons: She was far more progressive than many of her contemporaries and she was a young woman operating in a field dominated by older men.

Watkins’s life took a bizarre twist in 1929 when she decided to take a holiday and visit four old spinster aunts in Glasgow. She arrived in the Scottish city to find her aunts ill and living in squalid conditions. She decided to stay temporarily to help out her relatives. She attempted to continue her photographic career in Glasgow but failed. Even after all the old aunts died, Watkins remained in Glasgow. By that point, she had become an impoverished, forgotten recluse herself.

Watkins never married. The National Gallery’s Lori Pauli, who curated this exhibition, says there is evidence Watkins experienced some romantic tragedy as a young woman and never found romance again.

Two years before her death in 1969, Watkins gave a sealed box to a journalist neighbour, Joseph Mulholland, to keep for her and to be opened only after her death. When the box was opened, Mulholland discovered to his great surprise hundreds of Watkins’s photographs. She had never told her Glasgow neighbours of her successful photographic career in New York back in the 1920s.

Mulholland is determined the world will not forget Watkins. He has been striving for the last four decades to orchestrate exhibitions of Watkins’s work. There was one in Glasgow, one in New York and now, the largest ever, one at the National Gallery.

Pauli is hoping to tour the show, which is largely comprised of photographs Watkins gave Mulholland. The exhibition continues until January 6.

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