Luck would have it that I pulled Solander Box #9, consisting of 10 or so more Hugh Mackenzie etchings, and 4 other works on paper. It's interesting to be given another chance to strengthen my first selection and expand upon Mackenzie's work, by providing examples of the industrial etchings I referred to in relation to my second selection. But at some point you have to come out of the locker room and face your opponents.
I chose Kathleen Daly Pepper's Old Eskimo, 1955. Daly attended Ontario Collage of Art and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris. Daly married George Pepper in 1929, and the two practiced together in the Studio Building in Toronto.
Old Eskimo is a Sketch of an Inuit man, much like our only work by her husband George, Half Breed, which shares the same composition but with differing styles. I chose it for its obvious entrance into the conversation between Jessie Oonark's Inuk Catching a Bird, and Boyle's Northern Landscape.
In yesterdays discussion, we spoke about our collection having some gaps that restrict a comprehensive evaluation of our artists range of practice. So what our collection does do is offer a range of perspectives on certain themes, and issues, from the historical to the contemporary.
Here my selection is one that has a personal relationship to our neighbouring Up Close and Personal III exhibit, where some of here instructors and contemporaries are hung. But on the Smack Down side its period is absent.
As Up Close and Personal aims to represent a progression of art history in our collection, I felt Old Eskimo added the frame work for Boyle to make his comment. As Lisa put it on Day One, “The fact that the title is Northern Landscape, and the image is a portrait of a white male Cowboy and an Aboriginal male, sets up a number of questions and challenges for the viewer, particularly within the context of Canada's social and cultural histories, national identity, and the grip of the Group.”
With my third selection I had a chance to include another viewpoint. One from a white female artist who, with her husband, traveled to the Arctic to paint and draw the Inuit people, their daily life and their landscape. Often painting with members of the group of seven, and trained at OCA under Lismer and Macdonald, Daly represent a close tie to the group, accused for their grip. While also standing alone as a charming document of a person.
In the way Jessie Oonark's Inuk Catching a Bird, represents her peoples everyday, Daly's work documents this from the learned knowledge and training of her own culture. Darryn doubted a work would turn up that shared a common history with Oonark and in this I believe he refers to culture, and he will probably be right. But what he wasn't concerned with would be the other perspectives available. With Old Eskimo; on one hand, we have a bridge for the other works to relate in a different way, entering in to a negotiations about the role of the artist and their work as it preserves, celebrates and critiques culture; on the other, I have brought out the work that is being attacked by the argument happening between the other two, about who has license over the representation of culture. Now instead of being “in stark contrast” as Darryn aimed, they are starting to portray a Canadian narrative about the relationships of its peoples.
I took a risk with this work and didn't like it any where around the gallery, and since I was creating a disruption and the work is relatively small I placed it in between Inuk Catching a Bird and Northern Landscape, filling a gap we hadn't noticed.
I chose Kathleen Daly Pepper's Old Eskimo, 1955. Daly attended Ontario Collage of Art and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris. Daly married George Pepper in 1929, and the two practiced together in the Studio Building in Toronto.
Old Eskimo is a Sketch of an Inuit man, much like our only work by her husband George, Half Breed, which shares the same composition but with differing styles. I chose it for its obvious entrance into the conversation between Jessie Oonark's Inuk Catching a Bird, and Boyle's Northern Landscape.
In yesterdays discussion, we spoke about our collection having some gaps that restrict a comprehensive evaluation of our artists range of practice. So what our collection does do is offer a range of perspectives on certain themes, and issues, from the historical to the contemporary.
Here my selection is one that has a personal relationship to our neighbouring Up Close and Personal III exhibit, where some of here instructors and contemporaries are hung. But on the Smack Down side its period is absent.
As Up Close and Personal aims to represent a progression of art history in our collection, I felt Old Eskimo added the frame work for Boyle to make his comment. As Lisa put it on Day One, “The fact that the title is Northern Landscape, and the image is a portrait of a white male Cowboy and an Aboriginal male, sets up a number of questions and challenges for the viewer, particularly within the context of Canada's social and cultural histories, national identity, and the grip of the Group.”
With my third selection I had a chance to include another viewpoint. One from a white female artist who, with her husband, traveled to the Arctic to paint and draw the Inuit people, their daily life and their landscape. Often painting with members of the group of seven, and trained at OCA under Lismer and Macdonald, Daly represent a close tie to the group, accused for their grip. While also standing alone as a charming document of a person.
In the way Jessie Oonark's Inuk Catching a Bird, represents her peoples everyday, Daly's work documents this from the learned knowledge and training of her own culture. Darryn doubted a work would turn up that shared a common history with Oonark and in this I believe he refers to culture, and he will probably be right. But what he wasn't concerned with would be the other perspectives available. With Old Eskimo; on one hand, we have a bridge for the other works to relate in a different way, entering in to a negotiations about the role of the artist and their work as it preserves, celebrates and critiques culture; on the other, I have brought out the work that is being attacked by the argument happening between the other two, about who has license over the representation of culture. Now instead of being “in stark contrast” as Darryn aimed, they are starting to portray a Canadian narrative about the relationships of its peoples.
I took a risk with this work and didn't like it any where around the gallery, and since I was creating a disruption and the work is relatively small I placed it in between Inuk Catching a Bird and Northern Landscape, filling a gap we hadn't noticed.
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