Photograph courtesy: imperial smelting & refining co. ltd, markham, ontario.
Photograph courtesy: imperial smelting & refining co. ltd, markham, ontario.


The Drawing Society of Canada is committed to preserve the contributions of Canada's true drawing masters both past and present. They are the men and women whose passion for drawing is matched by a dedication to excel in their craft and a desire to share their talents with Canadians. Whether drawing master, painter, sculptor, carver or artist in other disciplines, drawing remains an integral part of their creative journey. Therefore the Drawing Society of Canada invites Canada's drawing masters to become honourary members of the society. If you know of such a drawing master please let us know so we may invite him or her to become an honourary member.

An ever growing list as we discover them:

*Eser Afacan
*Suvinai Ashoona *Igor V.Babailov *Robert Bateman
*Dianna Bonder *Mandy Boursicot *Michael Britton
*Oscar Cahén    
*David Owen Campbell *Victor Cinti *Ken Danby
*Jerry Davidson *Mina dela Cruz *Martha de la Fuente
*Marina Dieul *Michael Dumas *Joanne Finlay
*Barbara Fostka    
*Susan Fraser *Eric Freifeld *Yetvart (Ed) Garbis-Yaghdjian
*Constantine Gedal *David Gluck *John Gould
*Mark Gothreau *Paul Gross *Andrew Hamilton
*Randy Hann *Brenda Hill *Ronan Kennedy
*Kerry Kim *John Howe *Tom La Pierre
*Peter Leclerc *Yousha Liu *Margaret Florence Ludwig
*Peter Mah *Enid Maclachlan *Kavavaow Mannomee
*Rosemary Mihalyi *Ortansa Moraru *Autumn Skye Morrison
*Wendy Mould *John Newman *Myfanwy Pavelic
*Julia Penny *Dianna Ponting *Annie Pootoogook
*Bernard Aimé Poulin   *Nicholas Raynolds
*Steven Rhude *Danielle Richard *Penny Ridley
*Alma Kate Rumball *Catherince Robertson *Page Samis
*Yevgeniya Savosta *Erin Schwab *Terry Shoffner
*David Silverberg *Brian Smith *Deborah Strong
*Elaine Silverman Sturm *Donna Surprenant *Gerald Squires
*Michael Thompson *Gerrit Verstraete *Christopher Walker
*Stephen Warren    
    * New


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Eser Afacan was born in Turkey in 1953. His father, also an artist, was an Asurian and his mother was Greek Orthodox. Eser started to draw at a very young age. He studied in Manchester , England before he came to Norway in 1978, to study math and physics at the University of Bergen . While a student, he met well known Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum and in 1984, Eser became a student of Odd Nerdrum. He has lived in England and Norway for the past 32 years. His two children were born in Norway . In 1986, Eser held his first exhibition, and since that year, he has exhibited in many countries. He and his family moved to Canada in 2003, and have made their home in Kingston. He is a master in drawing and painting who takes his work very seriously, both as an artist and as a teacher. Eser himself requested that this page be more personal than just a conventional biography. The following is an attempt by his friend Espen Harward to describe the artist.

"It is not easy to describe Eser within a single page of words. I began work with Eser as a consultant for some of his technical systems. During my work with Eser I became interested in his art and his philosophy on life. What had started as work had become a passion, and the relationship formed by our regular discussions led me towards feeling more like a friend. Eser is a master of skills in many fields. He has been studying mathematics and physics, and has an impressive knowledge of the human brain. He is also very interested and constantly curious about all technical things, and he can learn everything about a machine or a computer just after reading the manual once. I am sure that if someone showed Eser how to fly an airplane, after only one lesson he could fly it perfectly without further instructions. As an artist, when talking about his work, he said: 'I do not paint and draw to be remembered. I give myself to serve the country where I live'. I think he is using his profession to develop himself and his mind. Thus I believe that his art is indeed a tool for greater goals. For the same reason I know Eser had and still has a problem with art-critics in newspapers. These people will not leave him in peace with his work. On the other hand I am sure that one day, he will show the world that art critics are doing more harm than good within the art world. Just to illustrate the unique journey of Eser Afacan, he once applied to the Norwegian government to stay in prison for two years. So he could be left in peace to continue his work. He also wanted to change someone with a criminal background, to show people how progress in the inner soul can be made through art and how it can improve that person's life. I know that a lot of people have tried to do such a thing with religion as a tool. With Eser there would be no religion at all, only art and self-development. 'Prison should not be a penalty, but a place to give people back what is missing.' Yet again, Eser is ready to give himself to art, and to make a new start in Canada . This way he can devote more time to develop new exiting techniques, and to plan new exhibitions for the future. Hopefully he can also dedicate more time to his wife and two beautiful children." His impressive paintings and drawings can be viewed online at www.afacan.com.


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Suvinai Ashoona is the daughter of the well-known Cape Dorset sculptor Kiuga Ashoona. She was born in Cape Dorset in August, 1961. Suvinai began drawing in 1995, when she presented some very detailed pen drawings which demonstrated a unique sensibility for the landscape in particular. Her work is very personal, meticulously detailed and precise, and her technique seemed especially well suited to the medium of dry-point etching. Suvinai's work was first included in the Cape Dorset annual print collection in 1997, with two small dry-points entitled Interior (1997-33) and Settlement (1997-34). Suvinai's work has attracted the attention of both curators and private collectors. She was featured along with her aunt, Napachie Pootoogook, and her grandmother, the late Pitseolak Ashoona, in the McMichael Canadian Collection's 1999 exhibition entitled Three Women, Three Generations. Several notable private galleries have also exhibited Suvinai's work. In the 2003 Annual Collection, Suvinai was represented by four prints depicting scenes from her youth. She is represented by Dorset Fine Arts at www.dorsetfinearts.com.


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Igor V. Babailov was born in 1965, in the Russian city of Glazov, in the Ural Mountains some nine hundred kilometres north east of Moscow. As a Canadian and internationally renowned portrait and figurative artist, he has distinguished himself in a lengthy series of official portraits of world leaders and distinguished individuals, and as an accomplished artist he remains a scholar and leading spokesperson for the traditional school of classical art. Igor V. Babailov, MFA, is a recipient of national and international competitions, awards and honors, including national and international portrait competitions.

After immigrating to Canada in the early 1990’s, he entered a variety of American competitions and won a number of first prizes. That quickly drew the attention of American portrait agents who soon flooded his studio with requests, especially from the South, for portraits in the syle of great masters. His fine art education, which began in 1974 and continued until 1990, belongs to the Russian/European academic school of art, where he graduated with a masters degree from the world acclaimed Surikov Academy of Fine Arts in Moscow. He is a third generation student of the famous painters Ilya Repin, V. Serov, and V. Favorskiy, with a legacy of creativity that dates back to when he was four years old when he painted his first portrait. In fact, Igor’s father Valery V.Babailov, naturally his first teacher, was a noted fine artist and composer, whose portraits, landscape paintings and musical compositions are a source of inspiration for many.

In his own words, Igor Babailov’s philosophy of painting is simple yet profound. "I love the life that surrounds me. I respect its history and I admire its future. To preserve it for our descendants the way it is, in its truth and beauty, is my duty and my goal as an artist."

As a true master of fine arts, he continues to hold a strong belief in eternal values, especially those values which can be traced right back to the Renaissance, when the awakening of spirituality and art built foundations of great artistic strength in the lives of many artists, foundations that still resonate with such values as: love and respect for God’s creation, appreciation of its harmony and beauty without alterations, necessity of study for the knowledge of human anatomy, knowledge of perspective, composition, and a dedication to painting and drawing methods of the masters matched by a quality of personal discipline and skill, based on that knowledge and based on the experiences of life.

Despite international acclaim for portraits of distinguished individuals and world leaders, Igor Babailov stays close to his creative roots of real people in real time, and like his idol and mentor, the Russian painter Ilya Repin ( 1844-1930 ), Igor paints “people from all walks of life, from beggars to generals.”

Honored with the title “living master” by the Art Renewal Center (ARC), Igor Babailov is an accomplished artist with outstanding credentials having attained the highest level of fine art education and having painted some of the world’s most important leaders. Over the past twenty years, he has painted numerous portraits of social, business and political elite. His notable paintings and murals are in important official and international collections including portraits of President George W. Bush, former mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York, President V.V. Putin of Russia, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Senator Hillary R. Clinton, Hockey Legend Bobby Hull, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney ( whose portrait hangs in Canada’s House of Commons next to a portrait of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, painted by Myfanwy Pavelic, who is also a fellow honourary member with Igor Babailov in the Drawing Society of Canada), and Frank Military of Warner Chappell Music in New York.

Igor Babailov is one of the few contemporary artists to be commissioned by the Vatican Museum, to paint the official historical portrait of Pope John Paul II, in commemoration of the World Youth Symposiums – a work in progress. In addition, he has just completed the portrait of television celebrity Regis Philbin, 2003 recipient of the Joe DiMaggio Award. His portrait was featured on the Regis and Kelly Morning Show. Igor Babailov is a speaker with the Harry Walker Agency, North America’s leading executive lecture agency. Some of his distinctive family portraits include the Pushkins, Desmarais, Khrushchev’s, and Ambassador and Mrs. Ruggiero of Rome. In 1996 he organized the first official delegation visit of American artists to Russia and has taught at the prestigious Florence Academy of Art. Two books have been published about Igor’s life and works; one was published by the Russian government, the other will soon come off the presses of a North American publisher. But the last words belong to some of Igor Babailov’s distinguished clients. Dr. Henry Kissinger called his portraits “marvelous,” and Frank Military said, “the Michelangelo of today!” Dick Martin, Executive Vice-President of AT&T stated: “we are of course familiar with his work and outstanding reputation,” and Senator Hillary R. Clinton described her painting as “wonderful”.

As founder of the Igor Babailov Institute of Realism and with studios in Montreal and Long Island, New York, as well as family and friends in native Russia, Igor Babailov is a Canadian to Canadians, a New Yorker to New York, and in Russia the people proudly call him theirs. Selections of his paintings and drawings can be viewed in his online gallery at www.babailov.com.


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Robert McLellan Bateman has been a keen artist and naturalist from his early days. He has always painted wildlife and nature, beginning with a representational style, moving through impressionism and cubism to abstract expressionism. In his early 30's he moved back to realism as a more suitable way to express the particularity of the planet. It is this style that has made him one of the foremost artists depicting the world of nature.

In the '70s and early '80s, Bateman's work began to receive critical acclaim and to attract an enormous following. His work is in many public and private collections, and several art museums, including the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole , WY . He was commissioned by the Governor-General of Canada to create a painting as the wedding gift for HRH Prince Charles from the people of Canada . His work is also represented in the collection of HRH Prince Philip, the late Princess Grace of Monaco and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands . Bateman has had many one-man museum shows throughout North America , including an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington , DC ; most of these shows have drawn record-breaking crowds.

His honours, awards and honorary doctorates are numerous: he was made Officer of the Order of Canada , the country's highest civilian award in 1984. He has also been given the Rachel Carson Award (1996), the Golden Plate from the American Academy of Achievement (1998) and the Order of British Columbia (2001); he was named one of the 20th Century's Champions of Conservation by the U.S. National Audubon Society (1998).

Through his long association with Mill Pond Press, thousands of wildlife lovers the world over have been able to enjoy Bateman prints. Books about his life and art include The Art of Robert Bateman, The World of Robert Bateman and Robert Bateman: An Artist in Nature and Natural Worlds. Thinking Like a Mountain, an environmentalist's look at the world and Birds brought sales of his books to over 1,000,000 copies. Two children's books are Safari, an illustrated book of African animals for young readers, and Bateman's Backyard Birds. He has also been the subject of several films. It is in honour of Bateman's contribution to art and conservation that one public and two secondary schools have been named after him. As well, he has been awarded 10 honorary doctorates.

Born in Toronto , with a degree in geography from the University of Toronto , Bateman taught high school for 20 years, including two years in Nigeria . He travelled around the world in a Land Rover in 1957/58, increasing his appreciation of cultural and natural heritage. Since leaving teaching in 1976 to paint full-time, he has travelled widely with his artist/conservationist wife Birgit to many remote natural areas.

Bateman's art reflects his commitment to ecology and preservation. Since the early 1960's, he has been an active member of naturalist and conservation organizations, now on a global scale. He has become a spokesman for many environmental and preservation issues and has used his artwork and limited edition prints in fund-raising efforts that have provided millions of dollars for these worthy causes.

He says, "I can't conceive of anything being more varied and rich and handsome than the planet Earth. And its crowning beauty is the natural world. I want to soak it up, to understand it as well as I can, and to absorb it . . . and then I'd like to put it together and express it in my painting. This is the way I want to dedicate my life."

He has two websites, www.robertbateman.ca and www.batemanideas.com


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Dianna Bonder was born in Kamloops B.C. in 1970, and as far back as she can remember, she has been drawing and writing stories of far away places and unimaginable characters. Inspired by the beauty of Alice in Wonderland, James and the Giant Peach, the quirky words of Shel Silverstein and the infamous Dr. Suess, Dianna has been inspired by some of the most unusual sources. "My mother nurtured the love of children's books in me...she taught elementary school and theatre and would often write children's stories for me to illustrate. As an only child I would spend hours colouring and drawing, so when my mother provided me with stories of her own to draw pictures for, I was over the moon" After studying Fashion Illustration in Toronto for 2 years, she then went on to study Fine Arts, Illustration and Commercial Design at the University College of the Cariboo. Shortly after, Dianna moved to Vancouver to pursue a successful career as a commercial artist but increasingly became disenchanted with the commercial industry. She quickly tired of the day to day hustle and tight deadlines and quietly evolved her unique style in the privacy of her home. This style soon found its way into the exciting world of children's picture books. After the enormous success of her first book, the Pacific Alphabet, Dianna went on to write and illustrate her bestselling book, titled the Accidental Alphabet. It wasn't long before she embarked upon a 2 year stretch of non stop illustration. Next on the list came Three Royal Tales, Digging Canadian Dinosaurs, Leon's Song, the award winning Eleven Lazy Llamas and most recently, Black and White Blanche. Currently, Dianna is working on her newest creation titled the "Dogabet". As both author and illustrator, the 26 letters of this dog breed alphabet have allowed her to take her unique, whimsical style to an entirely new level. Dianna's books have come to decorate the rooms of children and adorn the shelves of libraries throughout the world. Not a traveller crosses her path that doesn't take a little bit of Dianna home with them. This past winter saw the creation of Dianna's new studio on Gabriola Island . "A dream come true" is how she express's her enchantment with her new found home here on the island. After moving her family (husband, daughter, 3 dogs and 3 cats) to Gabriola Island, Dianna and her husband, Lee, decided to build a small studio in which she could not only work quietly but could also invite the public to view her books and paintings. The new studio not only provides a quiet working environment and gallery but also allows the public to see the artist at work..."a behind the scenes peek." When people view my work I will quite often hear giggles. I love that! My work isn't meant to be taken seriously...it's silly and funny and whimsical and hopefully allows the viewer to enjoy a fantasy. I am a huge fan of Graeme Bases' work. I enjoy the way in which he reaches out to take your hand as you follow him through his paintings. There are so many levels to his work in the sense that what you see isn't always what you get. I hope that is also what I bring to the table with my books and paintings. I want the viewer to walk away amused or confused. Either way! Now working on her 8th children's book, Dianna shows no signs of slowing down. "My diary is filled with new ideas...stories and sketches. Whatever inspires me makes its way into my little black book." "I love to watch the world unfold in front of me...so much happens in a 24 hours period. I have more ideas than I know what to do with." So don't be surprised it you too, someday find your face or your antics plastered in one of Dianna's new children's books. Dianna's website is www.diannabonder.com


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Mandy Boursicot from Vancouver, BC, was born in Hong Kong in 1959. She graduated from Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada in 1999. Since then, she has been a professional artist, receiving both national and international recognition. Her gallery representation has included Diane Farris Gallery, Buschlen-Mowatt Galleries, Agnes Bugera Gallery in Edmonton, and the Wallace Gallery in Calgary. In 2003, she received the British Columbia Arts Council Award. She subsequently spent four years in Florence, Italy, at the Angel Academy of Art, mastering the rigours of the Academic method, and became the principal drawing instructor there. In 2012, she returned to Vancouver, where she is a leader in the Classical Realism movement. She practices and teaches in her private atelier, passing on her knowledge and skill, in the time-honoured tradition of 19th century ateliers.

From an early age, Mandy travelled the world with her family, visiting museums, art galleries and churches. This had a profound influence on her, cultivating a deep respect for the power of figurative work. Today, she continues to travel, and to marvel at paintings, sculptures and architecture that tell the story of human experience across time, and across so many varied cultures. mandyboursicot@gmail.com / http://mandyboursicot.com


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Michael Britton was born in Canada in 1957. He completed his studies in fine art at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto completing his final year in the college's New York City off-campus program. After graduation he entered the fast-paced world of New York advertising where he worked as a Senior Art Director for large, national accounts in Manhattan for 14 years. Despite long working hours, he continued painting and drawing classes at the Art Students League. Michael was granted a full tuition scholarship to study in the Masters Program at the New York Academy of Art where he was classically trained for a further four years in advanced painting and drawing where he learned many of the 'classical' methods.

Britton returned to Canada in 1992, settling in Vancouver , BC .  From 1997 to 2004, he was the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Vancouver Academy of Art which, in turn, evolved into www.artacademy.com, a fine art educational / training DVD publisher.

Trained extensively in oil paint, Mr. Britton works in watercolor. In his recent works Britton employs candy-coloured color schemes and symphonic composition (dynamic symmetry) to create powerful, life-size figurative works. He has received international recognition for pushing the medium to new limits in his edgy, contemporary style of commentary. His most recent exhibition have been at the Jan Baum Gallery in Los Angeles , the William Parker Gallery in Washington , D.C. and the Sonia Zaks Gallery in Chicago . He can be contacted at www.artacademy.com


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Oscar Cahén was born on February 8, 1916 , in Copenhagen , Denmark . He studied drawing and painting as well as design and illustration in Germany , Italy , France , Sweden and Czechoslovakia . After he completed a Masters Degree in Fine Art from the Kunstakadame in Dresden , he was appointed professor of design, illustration and painting at the Rotter School in Prague . Because of anti-Nazi activities in pre- war Germany , in 1940 Oscar Cahén fled to Montreal , Canada , where he began a freelance career as illustrator for The Standard and the National Film Board, followed by an appointment as Art Director for Magazine Digest . In 1943, he moved to Toronto where his outstanding drawings and illustrations as well as his paintings commanded immediate attention. Oscar Cahén became a Canadian citizen in 1946. In 1953, a group of Canadian painters including Oscar Cahén adopted the name "Painters Eleven" and launched Toronto 's answer to the New York school of abstract expressionism. In addition to being a founding member of Canada 's Painters Eleven , Oscar Cahén was a member of the Canadian Society of Graphic Artists, Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour , and the Ontario Society of Artists. From 1953 to 1960, Painters Eleven sought a united front against artistic traditionalism and by their continual presence they changed Toronto's art scene, spoken of metaphorically in Canadian Art as having undergone a "blood transfusion," with an unprecedented "quantity and variety of art," and it was Oscar Cahén who stood out as exceptional. He was tragically killed in an automobile accident on the afternoon of November 26, 1956 in Oakville , Ontario , and his loss was deeply felt. In recognition of Oscar Cahén's profound influence in the arts, the Toronto Art Director's Club created the Oscar Cahén Memorial Award. Today, the curatorial and archival care of Oscar Cahén's work are managed by his son Michael Cahén. With the founding of the Cahén Archives , Michael aims to reach Canadians and beyond with Oscar Cahén's art, together with a sustainable and continuous program of education and exhibitions to ensure the voice of Oscar Cahén's art continues to inspire artists and viewers alike, and to take its rightful place in the history of Canadian art. For more information visit www.oscarcahen.com.


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David Owen Campbell was born in Toronto in 1949. He studied at the Ontario College of Art and graduated in 1972. The following year he began post graduate studies at the College. During these years David received a number of scholarships as well as grants from the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council. His work is found in many private and corporate collections, including the Toronto Dominion Bank, Clarkson Gordon & Co., Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and Norcen Energy Resources. David has exhibited both drawings and paintings frequently in various one man and group exhibitions at Nancy Poole's Studio in Toronto and London, La Cimaise Gallery in Toronto and the Drew Smith Gallery. Group shows include an impressive list of exhibitions that span some twenty years from 1970 to today. In 1990 David began a series of large oils to capture the human form in a unique way. They are invented figures, transformed humans, that he says act as "a means by which I make visible certain elusive and intangible ideas such the mystery that lies at the heart of human existence and our relentless struggle to understand our world". He continues to be an instructor of figure drawing and painting at the Ontario College of Art.


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Victor Cinti was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1968. His older brother Thomas (an artist himself) as well as the environs of Hamilton; The Red Hill Valley and The Art Gallery of Hamilton all provided solid art sources. The Red Hill Valley was a rite of passage into the trails of rocks and trees that continue to provide visual influence. The gallery was his first initiation into the idea of art as display and as an object to be delighted by and knowledge gleaned from. Notable and influential shows at the time included the pre-colombian gold objects, Ivan Eyre and the King Tut exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Thomas encouraged Victor to study at the Dundas Valley School of Art and then later to follow to the Ontario College of Art in Toronto.

Just a week shy of 18, Victor moved to Toronto to start his formal studies.  The Eric Frefield exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario welcomed him in that first week and started a deep respect for the Canadian master. Also giving a wonderful introduction into the history of the college, its teachers and students. With his brother, Victor would meet the art of the teachers and visit the studios of Tom LaPierre, John Newman and Frederick Hagan. All furthered Victor's respect for the past and introduced him to a continuous stream of art and artists. The College at the time leaned towards drawing with the influence of Frefield fresh and as his students (LaPierre and Newman) were major teachers and notable draughtsmen. Victor studied drawing four days a week and one day of painting. Further opportunities for drawing from the model were found at the Toronto School of Art in the evenings and weekends. Student jobs at the College allowed time to delve into, clean and organize various rooms and uncover bits of College history. With a keen eye Victor delighted in the connections and collections of history at the College. The library at the College along with the Art Gallery Of Ontario would also open Victor's eyes to the wealth of Canadian and European masters. Further, Toronto's downtown streets and back alleys supplied various subjects to be painted and drawn in watercolour and ink. Discoveries in the Annex included the Norman Elder Museum. Elder was a well travelled eccentric and collected just about everything. His African and Oceanic collections made a particular impression on the artist and he would spend hours combing the collection and drawing the various bugs, bones and ethnographic material. The art of collecting engaged in by Elder, his brother and LaPierre, the knowing of the cultures and the people that Victor experienced in Toronto made a lasting impression. Since then Victor has collected and taken great care in the displaying of art objects.

Taking the College for everything it could offer Victor joined the off campus Florence program. Tom LaPierre was his studio instructor and Peter Porcal would inform him of the history of art.

As guaranteed, Europe gave a wealth of opportunities for Victor to study. The art at the museums as well as the museums themselves had immense influence on the development of the young artist.  Florence was his base and he discovered its various nooks and crannies-- all painted by the wonderful artists of the past. Giotto and Fra Angelico amazed and instructed in the art of designing figural proximetrics on a 2-dimensional surface. A trip into Northern Europe (Germany, France, Belgium, Holland and England) provided museum after museum. Victor gained an encyclopedic knowledge of the museums visited, with location of rooms, room arrangement and  lists of paintings in the collections committed to memory. As well, the drawing cabinets of the Albertina and the Uffitzi provided great opportunities to study master drawings in detail.

Wanting to expand on the information gathered in the museums of Europe, Victor enrolled in the Art History program at McMaster University upon his return to Canada. Time as the Artistic Director for the on-campus newspaper Between the Lines would allow an opportunity for illustration work and to hone skills as a writer on art. Not without merit, the Art History program took too much time away from studio work.

Studio work was interlaced with various part-time work until a job opportunity in Japan provided a door to the East.

The first trip to Japan gave a steady income, interesting subject matter to paint and enough money to return to Canada and set up a studio at 49G Victoria Avenue. For two years Victor would paint, draw and exhibit in Southern Ontario. A second trip to Japan continues to provide a fine roof over the studio and various ideas to paint and draw. Living just outside Osaka, on the mountain Iimurayama, Victor takes advantage of the local trails and enjoys the variety of ecosystems. The hills and valleys offer abundant landscape subjects. In the city, the Kabukiza (a small theatre) offers a chance to escape into marvelously staged dramas of love and lust; loyalty and trust; murder and mayhem. Another visual dynamic subject, Sumo has been of great interest and provides ample opportunity to put brush in hand.

Victor Cinti's work can be viewed at:
http://www.kuroneko-camera.com/victor_cinti/
http://www.galleryonthebay.com/Artists.html
Contact: victorcinti1@yahoo.ca


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Ken Danby (1940-2007) was born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario on March 6, 1940. His brother, Marvin, four years his senior, displayed natural abilities and interest in creating art as a teenager, which he later set aside. Ken credits Marvin's early interest with inspiring his own. When he was ten years old, in Grade Six, he informed them that he wanted to become an artist, and that a guidance teacher had advised him of a school called the Ontario College of Art, where he could study art. Eight years later, in 1958. In 1963, Danby arranged to review his work with gallery owner, Walter Moos, of Toronto . In 1964, Gallery Moos presented Danby's first one-man show, which promptly sold out and set an example that was repeated and surpassed over many years. Over the years, Danby and Moos have presented many one-man exhibitions and the artist has participated in numerous group shows internationally. Major collectors, including private, corporate and museum collections, responded enthusiastically and the artist is today recognized internationally as one of the world's foremost realist painters - as well as being one of Canada's best known artists. The recipient of many awards and honours, Ken Danby continues to respond to his personal experiences with unique and creative dedication. Whenever he's asked to identify his best work, or his favourite, his answer remains the same - "my next one". Ken Danby is one of only a few contemporary artists who have created paintings that make the transition from artwork to cultural icon. While the popularity of his work and his contributions to the arts make him a celebrity in Canada , it is his outstanding timeless images that have earned him international recognition as one of the foremost realist artists. Studying a Ken Danby painting is more than experiencing fine art. It is sharing in the artist's response to his own experience. Ken Danby's work has been the subject of several popular books, including Ken Danby, published by Clarke Irwin, Danby: Images of Sport published by MacMillan of Canada, and Ken Danby: The New Decade published by Stoddart. He is listed in numerous reference publications such as.Who's Who in Canada , Who's Who in America , Dictionary of International Biography, Who's Who in American Art, Canadian Encyclopedia, and Contemporary Artists. Many public institutions hold Ken Danby's originals in their collections, including The Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum in New York, The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Oklahoma Art Centre, The Governor General of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, University of California Art Gallery, The City of Jerusalem, Israel and the Bradford City Art Gallery in England. Ken Danby is an elected member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Among the many awards he has received are the Jessie Dow Prize, the 125th Anniversary Commemorative Medal of Canada, and spanning twenty-five years of recognition, both the Queen's Silver and Golden Jubilee Medals. He has been invested in both the Order of Ontario, and the Order of Canada, the province's and country's highest and most prestigious honours, and he is an honourary member of the Drawing Society of Canada.

 "I've always embraced a wide variety of interests," says Ken Danby, who has become one of the world's foremost realists. "I've always preferred the challenge of image making without limiting myself to any particular subject matter. While many people may recognize my work in sport, others know it through my portraits, landscapes, or whatever. I simply respond to new experiences and encounters, wherever I find them." Danby's instincts told him to work from nature; it was through nature that he learned "the individual fundamentals of image making." He strives to generate a sense of presence in his paintings, to "bring out some emotions, a feeling of life.... I create imagery that intrigues me." The art of Ken Danby also "intrigues" and inspires people everywhere. The authorized and official Ken Danby website is www.kendanbyart.com


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Jerry Davidson was born in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1935. He moved to the west coast of Canada when he was a teenager and after high school he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. He spent 15 years in the R.C.A.F. with active duty as a fighter pilot in Germany as well as flight instructor in Canada. In 1967, he left the service and joined as a pilot for Canadian Pacific Airlines ( later Canadian Airlines International ) in Vancouver where he flew overseas and domestic flights on the DC-8, DC-10, 747 and 737 aircraft. Jerry comes from a family of artists, and credits both his father, an accomplished painter, and his brother, a commercial artist, as early influences in developing and maintaining his personal interest in art. He remembers times of sketching and drawing informally in his early years, but it was not until about 1975, that he took up painting seriously and began to exhibit his work. However, trying to combine a second career as an artist with the demands of commercial flying proved to be difficult. In 1990, he made his decision to take an early retirement from the airline in order to devote himself full time to his art. Jerry paints in a variety of media including acrylic, watercolor and pastel as well as creating very refined drawings using graphite pencil. His style is highly realistic and exacting, and his treatment of the subject of his work often incorporates an element of mystery or ambiguity especially when the main subject is the human figure. Regardless of technical skills, Jerry considers the greatest challenge he faces is to offer the viewer visual information that not only appeals to the eye, but stimulates the imagination. His works have been sold through a number of public and private galleries in Canada and a major piece of his work featuring the Canadian Snowbirds in flight, hangs in the National Defence Air Command Headquarters. In addition to his drawings, Jerry has enjoyed considerable success for a number of years as a photographer, particularly in the field of theater and classical dance. He has worked with some of the major ballet companies in Canada including the National Ballet of Canada, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and the forerunner to Ballet B.C. In addition to exhibiting his photographs, he has had several illustrated articles published in photo, dance, and travel magazines in both Canada and the United States. He is author of "From Black and White to Color," a popular book on photographic darkroom technique now in its third printing, and published by Pembroke Publishers of Toronto. He also had a long association with the airshow industry and was formerly a team photographer for Canada's famous military air demonstration squadron, the "Snowbirds." Jerry Davidson's work has been exhibited at such galleries as the Richmond Arts Centre, the Raymond Chow Art Gallery in Vancouver, and other Vancouver galleries including: Alex Fraser Gallery, Kenneth Heffel Gallery, Paperworks Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Theatre Gallery, Presentation House Gallery, Surrey Art Gallery, Vancouver East Cultural Centre, Procopé Gallery, Robson Media Centre, Vancouver Art Gallery ( Endeavour Society ), and the ZheeClay Gallery. In Calgary he has exhibited at the Folio Art Gallery, and on Saltspring Island at the Saltspring Art Gallery, Vortex Gallery, Pegasus Art Gallery, and currently the J.Mitchell Gallery. For over twenty one years, Jerry has lived on Salt Spring Island, where he continues to work in his home studio. His work can be viewed on his webpage at http://www.members.shaw.ca/jerrydavid/


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Martha de la Fuente was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a daughter of a very creative European family. She completed her degree in Architecture from the National University of Buenos Aires. Married while working at the Private University of Belgrano as a Professor of Architectural Design, she gave birth to two children. With extensive travels up and down South America, one of her highlights was witnessing the building of  Brasilia, growing from its fantastical surroundings. Martha and her family decided to leave Argentina in 1982, just before the infamous Falkland War. Mexico was their destination, and Mexico provided them with the unforgettable experience of various cultures expressed in their surreal landscape, their arts and crafts. However, in time they headed North to Toronto, Canada, to realize hopes of security, comfort, and organization. Martha enrolled in art classes at the Central Technical School and the Art Gallery of Ontario. She worked at several art studios with many artists of diverse interests and talents. On Sundays she attended the Arts & Letters Club where artists brought all forms of expression to be discovered, shared, and enjoyed. Her works have been accepted in many juried  shows and are part of Private Collections in both Americas and Europe. According to Martha, “I have been drawing since I remember. The line is my instrument, I use it to  explore and draw what I find essential in my subjects, always with the same passion and unbreakable enthusiasm.” Her drawings (Images 1, 2, 6, 8 –  size:11 x 17) comprise a mix of graphite pencil, charcoal, and pastel. Contact: marthalidia40@hotmail.com


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Mina dela Cruz was born in the Philippines in 1962 and immigrated to Canada in 1977. She currently resides and works as an artist in Toronto. Although Mina displayed artistic inclinations as a child,she did not pursue a career in the arts. This decision was strongly influenced by her status as an immigrant, and her need to have a career that would bring future financial stability. This resulted in a 20 year career in the corporate world. In 2004, after much soul searching, Mina left her career in Human Resources to finally pursue her passion in drawing. She spent the next three years developing and strengthening her drawing skills. With solid drafting skills under her belt, she then taught herself to paint. Mina considers herself to be a contemporary realist artist with her work mainly focused in still life and portraiture. Her technique is academic or traditional in style; a technique that emphasizes strong skills in drafting. Her short foray as a professional artist has been very positive thus far, resulting in her participation in various group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Her paintings and drawings hang in private collections in Canada and abroad. In 2009, she was invited and accepted as an honourary member of the Drawing Society of Canada. The Drawing Society of Canada is a non-profit arts education initiative dedicated to the promotion, preservation, and public awareness of Canada’s drawing masters, past and present. Visit her website at www.minadelacruz.com


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Marina Dieul was born in France ( 1971) into a family of French and Canadian artists ( her father's uncle was the renowned Canadian painter Clarence Gagnon ) She began visiting European museums at a young age. It was during these visits that she absorbed the talent of the great masters. She quite naturally followed her artistic vocation and completed her studies in Fine Arts in France . She received her diploma with distinction, the jury recognizing in particular the quality of and commitment to her work. Her focus is primarily Still Life, Trompe I'Oeil and Portraiture. Her mastery of painting and drawing techniques allows her to go beyond mere likeness to express the interiority of her model. The portraits of Marina Dieul are distinguished by their sensitivity, grace and harmony. She is especially known for her babies and toddlers portraits, powerful and delicate at the same time. Marina is a member of the Portrait Society Of Canada, and the Portrait Society Of America. She received international recognition for her paintings and strong drawings. The artist has lived and worked for some years now in Montreal , Quebec . She is represented by Bohemiarte Gallery in old Montreal . Her work can also be seen on her blog : http://marinadieul.blogspot.com/


Awards:
2007 : Finalist in the People & Figure competition, International Artist Magazine.
2007 : Grand Prize, Junction Art Festival, Toronto .
2007: Finalist Portrait and Figure category, The Artist's Magazine 24th Annual competition .
2007: Two trompe-l'oeil finalists, still life category, The Artist's Magazine 24th Annual competition.
2007: Finalist Kingston Prize, Canadian Portrait Competition.
2007: First Prize, dry media category, Richeson Portrait and Figure Competition.
Juror: Everett Raymond Kinstler.
2006: Honorable mention, International Competition, Portrait Society of Canada, Toronto .


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Michael Dumas was born in 1950 and raised in Whitney , Ontario , Canada , on the edge of the vast wilderness area of Algonquin Park , where he worked for a time as a forest ranger. His familiarity with the natural world is based on first hand experiences from early childhood to the present. It is from this intimate source that he draws vivid and perennial inspiration for his drawings and paintings of nature. This sensitive relationship with his subjects, is further expressed through a compassionate and highly personal interpretation, something that has not gone unnoticed by followers of his work. The late Dr. Carl Sagan, Astrophysicist and Pulitzer Prize Recipient said of Michael's work that it 'displays an extraordinary ability to combine scientifically accurate ideas with sophisticated artistic vision and technique'. The full scope of Michael's artwork deals with the subject of 'nature' in the broadest sense of life and existence, be it the many forms of landscape, animal and plant life, rural themes in artifact and architecture, and the human condition. Regardless of the objects depicted, they are inevitably presented in a way that reflects the artist's intimate and often very introspective relationship with them. 'It is difficult to say just why I would choose to draw or paint a particular thing. It is not as if I deliberately set out to depict a certain subject because of a pre-existing interest in it or a sense of beauty about it, even though it may indeed be both interesting and beautiful. Rather, it is the act of direct observation that instils in me a strong compulsion to express something of it. In a very real way, its not about the object as such, but what I've made of it that is the subject.' Michael's art is recognized on a national and international level, and his work has been reproduced on Canadian commemorative postage stamps, and coins struck by the Royal Canadian Mint. He has exhibited in such notable venues as the Canadian National Museum, the McMichael Canadian Collection, The Royal Ontario Museum, the Animal Kingdom at Disney World - Fla, Hong Kong City Hall, Spanierman Gallery - NY, and the Suntory Museum of Art in Japan, to name  a mere few. He is also represented in numerous permanent collections world wide, such as Nature in Art: The international Museum of Art Inspired by Nature in England , the Ontario Provincial Collection in Canada , and the Takamura Museum of Art in Japan . A long list of special events are part of Michael's profile, and many of these are associated with various charitable and conservation causes. A six year project which began in 1978 was one of Michael's first efforts reflecting his interest and concern with endangered species. Simply entitled 'Canadian Endangered Species', this project was supported by the Canadian governments 'Explorations' program. It eventually involved a coast to coast series of observations in the field, a collection of over thirty original works, written field notes and poetic descriptions of each species. In 1990 he initiated a series of 36 paintings depicting rare, threatened, and extinct birds with the title of 'Save the World's Birds' under the auspices of the International Committee for the Preservation of Birds and Suntory Corporation - Japan. Five years later he also produced a series entitled 'Albatross 1000', which was instrumental in raising funds for the Wild Bird Society of Japan to support a project with the goal of raising the world population of the short-tailed albatross to 1000, which was ultimately successful. He was the first artist ever to win the Ontario Conservation Award, and likewise in the case of the Carling-O'keefe Professional Conservationist Award in 1987. At that time it was calculated that he had been instrumental in raising in excess of five million dollars for conservation efforts in Canada . He is also the first artist to win the Habitat Canada stamp-print program through direct competition. In 1990 Michael was a featured guest at the International Conservation Summit in Osaka , Japan , where he was formally presented to Prince and Princess Hitachi of the Japanese Imperial Family. He has enjoyed working associations with Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands and HRH Prince Philip - Duke of Edinburgh via World Wildlife Fund functions. Similarly, he has worked alongside other notables such as Doctor Richard Leakey in Kenya , and engaged in conservation fund-raising and awareness programs on a global basis. Perhaps surprising to many who know of Michael's significant contributions to the awareness of ecological issues, the artist does not identify this as the defining aspect of his art. 'Of course I have grave concerns about the state of global environments, endangered species, etc., but it is quite separate from my identity as an artist, and even though I have dedicated a considerable effort expressing these concerns in some of my work, by far the overwhelming majority of my art falls outside of this arena. What unites my work in its fullest variety is a personal 'sense of life', and by that I mean my art is a forum in which I can examine 'life at large', react to it, wonder about it, conceptualize it, etc.. A good deal of the work I put out is exploratory in nature, an attempt to define just what the subject means to me, and often enough to be encouraging, there are mixed in among these, works that seem to accomplish this well enough.' Several films have been produced on Michael and his work, including 'Nature's Gallery' produced by Nichol & Associates, which is part of the CBC film library and distributed to networks abroad through Lynx Films, Toronto . He has also been subject of several television documentaries, including a two part series for PBS in 1995, and another also by PBS in their 2005 series 'Journeys of an Artist' entitled 'Winter in Algonquin'. His art has been included in a number of books, such as Waterfowl of North America - Ducks Unlimited Canada, Nature in Art: A Celebration of 300 Years of Wildlife Paintings - David & Charles, London , and Natural Habitats - Spanierman LLC, New York .In recognition of his substantial contributions to the arts and conservation, Michael is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades. To name just a few, he is the recipient of the Outstanding People of the 20 th and 21 st Century Citations from the International Biographical Centre, Cambridge , England , and was elected a Life Fellow of this Association in 2000. He is a member of the Society of Animal Artists in New York , and a founding member of The Society of Wildlife Art of the Nations in England . He received the 20 th Century Achievement Award issued by The American Biographical Institute in 2000, and is listed in Who's Who in America, who's Who in Canada, Outstanding People of the 20 th Century, Madison Who's Who of Professionals, Outstanding People of the 21 St Century, The International Register of Profiles, and Who's Who in the World. In 2006 he received the Decree of Excellence in Art bestowed upon him by the International Biographical Centre - Cambridge , England . Mich ael Dumas' website is www.natureartists.com/dumasm.htm


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Joanne Finlay was born in 1955 in Mission, BC. Joanne draws and paints for the sheer joy of being able to experiment with texture in pen/ink, graphite, acrylics and watercolor/mixed media. She became much more observant in her life in the early 1990's. She moved back to the West Coast after being away for quite a number of years and was amazed by the beauty that she had left behind.  Joanne started to see rock formations with a more curious eye, ocean beaches from an observer’s camera (with their never ending tide pools) and the wonderful variety which is part of the urban garden and rural landscape. The Fraser Valley of British Columbia is like an open pallet with colors radiating from the blueberry fields, gladiola farms and the ever colorful farmland which changes with the seasons.  Her current work is primarily impressionistic realism, especially in her paintings of the Gulf Islands and local landscapes.  She has a special fondness for pen/ink and graphite which is where she started her journey a number of years ago. Joanne is an active member of the Federation of Canadian Artists (Fraser Valley Chapter) and is an Artist In Residence at the Langley Arts Council Gallery.  She loves to learn and enjoys attending all types of workshops and classes to meet others who can’t live without creating!  Joanne was delighted when her pen/ink piece "Sandstone In David's Cove" was juried into the Federation of Canadian Artists International Exhibition, Painting On The Edge this year.  Her work can be found in collections both locally and nationally and she is always thrilled when someone falls in love with one of her paintings or drawings. Joanne is an artist who believes anyone can make art (which takes many different forms) and that it is ultimately the most intimate form of self-expression and joy.  jfinlay@telus.net / www.joannefinlay.com



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Barbara Fostka was born in 1941 on November 22. She is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art & Design in 1963, as well as the Arts Students League of New York in 1965. Further studies at the University of Toronto in 1968, qualified her to be an art specialist. Her passion is drawing and painting, and whether she works in her studio or spends time supporting special arts groups and individuals, she remains first and foremost a dedicated and accomplished professional whose love for art is evident in everything she does. “I really love to draw and paint,” says Barbara, “and to achieve the essence of my subject.” That essence, matched by a strong tradition of skill and creativity, has made Barbara Fostka a regular award winner in many shows. She is an RCA, academician of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and a member in numerous arts organizations including the Society of Canadian Artists, Ontario Society of Artists, Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour, and the Colour & Form Society. Even with a rich history including art instructor at the Ontario College of Art & Design, University of Toronto, and the Ontario College of Education, or guest demonstrator for several groups including the Franklin Carmichael Centre, she still finds time almost every week to draw in Neilson Park, a favourite, plus of course special artistic events at Geneva Park as well. Awards for Barbara’s work include such highlights as the Peter Haworth Award, Arjo Wiggens Award, National Watercolour Award, Canadian National Fine Arts Competition, American Watercolour, Aird Gallery and Audubon Artists. Whether Barbara’s work has been added to public and corporate collections, or viewed by many in as many solo and juried exhibitions, her work has touched many from Toronto to New York, from California to Kleinburg to Montreal, and more. Toronto’s Aird Gallery and Roberts Gallery, Kleinburg’s McMichael Gallery, Oakville’s Abbozzo Gallery, Toronto’s First Canadian Place, Markham’s Varley Gallery, Montreal’s Ogilvie Gallery, New York’s National Arts Club, the Muckentahaler Cultural Centre in California and Toronto’s Arts & Letters Club, are just a few of the many galleries where Barbara has exhibited her work. Corporations such as Financial Life Assurance Company, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, National Ballet of Canada, Wright & Associates, and the Canadian Bankers Association, are just some of the many collectors of Barbara’s work.

Barbara is well-known and well-liked because of her helpful and friendly nature. However, her keen drawing abilities, her wonderfully detailed watercolours, and her beautiful portraits, have added to her reputation as a fine Canadian master. She makes her home and studio in Etobicoke, Ontario. Her work can be viewed at www.societyofcanadianartists.com ( just go to “members” and Barbara Fostka ). She accepts commissions and can be reached at bfostka@rogers.com.


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Susan Fraser (nee Bogden) was born in 1958, and educated in the United States , where she worked her way through university at the campus greenhouses, botanical gardens and microbiology labs. Upon graduating she worked at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center .

In 1983 she hitch-hiked around Europe touring galleries, museums and churches. Her art career began while living in Germany from 1984 to 1988. In 1988 she immigrated to Canada and painted commission work based on the abundant migratory waterfowl of the Ontario flyways. A year on Vancouver Island afforded opportunities to paint Orcas and to experience the west coast art scene. Susan now resides in the Ottawa Valley , nestled between the Ottawa River and Algonquin Park where she is frequently visited by deer, owls, wolves and black bear on her acreage. Her charcoal drawings are a result of life long study of nature and of motion- activated cameras which capture the deer in their natural state. The most intimate poses are captured without awareness of a human presence. Choosing to draw a head and shoulder portrait reveals their state of emotion through their eyes and facial expressions. Susan has an amazing touch for textures, catching the velvet of the deer's coat and the shine of the eye.

The toned paper provides both the background and the medium tone of the subject. The shading and highlights are done with black and white charcoal respectively. Many layers of varying hardness of charcoal are applied, blended and lifted with an eraser to provide a depth of texture to the fur.

"I am amazed at the openness of the facial expressions of deer. Their sensitivity to their surroundings is visible in every twitch of ear, side long glance or overall demeanor. As a mother I feel a great connection to the deer on my property, which emerge as wide eyed fawns, vigilantly tended by their mothers, and grow into curious teenagers. Last year's teenagers come back as young adults searching for opportunities to start their own families. The young bucks apprentice with the older bucks, learning what they need to survive. I hope to bring the viewer on my journey of understanding of the deer community. Their family interactions are very much like our human families."


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Eric Freifeld - ( 1919 - 1984 ) Eric Freifeld was born in 1919, in Saratov Russia. In 1924, after the death of his father, Eric, his sister Anna, and mother moved to Edmonton, Canada. He is a member of the (RCA) Royal Canadian Academy, and past Chairman of the Fine Arts Department of the Ontario College of Art. Eric's creative gifts, especially a deep passion for drawing, were evident since childhood, showing surprising command of form and anatomy as early as age 14. At age 17 Eric left school to devote full time to painting, supporting his venture with menial evening jobs. In 1937 he won a Canada-wide Carnegie Trust competition to attend the Banff Summer School of Fine Arts. The following year Eric set out for London, England. Enroute he visited art museums in Toronto, Montreal, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. While in London he enrolled in evening figure drawing classes at St.Martin's School of Art. During the day he painted London street scenes. Extraordinary developments marked this unique period in the nineteen year old Eric's artistic journey. A watercolour was accepted by the New English Art Club, to hang side by side with some famour painters. The prestigious Brooks Street Gallery invited Eric to hold a one-man exhibition. The gallery even provided financial assistance to enable Eric to stay in southern France to paint for the exhibition. The exhibition, held in February 1939, was a sellout and was critically acclaimed. Much attention bestowed on the young painter included a party thrown for him by Vincent Massey, then High Commissioner for Canada. With the threat of war in Europe, Eric returned to Edmonton. Despite difficult adjustments, he developed a desire for teaching and began classes for children and adults. A break came when noted conductor Arthur Benjamin, arranged for an exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery. At age 22, Eric represented Alberta at the Conference of Canadian Artists in Kingston, held in June 1941 under the auspices of the Carnegie Corporation, the National Gallery of Canada and Queen's University. From 1941 to 1946 Eric's activities were many. He served in the Canadian Army from '42 to '44, as artist on staff at the Canadian Camouflage School. He taught evening classes at the Vancouver School of Art. He assisted Jack Shadbolt in executing a large mural for the local United Services Centre. From '44 to '46 he studied at the Art Students League of New York. So impressed was the League's master teacher Robert Beverly Hale, with Eric's work, Hale asked Eric to teach his classes for a year while he went on sabbatical. Instead, in 1946, Eric took up a position of figure drawing and watercolour intructor at the Ontario College of Art. A period of intense creativity followed. It was the beginning of his passion for paiting abandoned exteriors and interiors that would continue for the next 30 years. Despite a seventeen month interruption because of bedridden tuberculosis, a time spent at the Hamilton Mountain Sanatorium, he still produced two outstanding drawings. Freifeld's peace of mind and productivity were greatly dependent on the ups and downs of his life. Marriage to Gladys Sumbling in 1957 gave birth to a daughter, Miriam. After release from the sanetorium, Eric resumed work at the College in the autumn of 1949. He began a series of highly structural, detailed paintings that earned him a prominent position among the Canadian painters of his generation. Noted critic Doris Shadbolt has written of these watercolours of sustained conceptual nature: "[They are] actually minutely intricate and rich carbon pencil drawings with colour playing an important but not crucial role... To look at one of these...epics is to become irresistably involved: with the proliferating detail, the sheer technical mastery, the evocative subject matter, the hypnotically weaving rhythms. His subjects which are steeped in intimate human history, have to do with abandonment, decay, faded glory, decadence... Texture and rhythm are the essential terms in which Freifeld perceives and realized these human situations; and the accumulated minutae which comprise them, while retaining their identity and object relevance, have a primary life as form. Lines, masses, planes, undulate and pulsate; surfaces corrugate, crust and shrivel; differences of scale and substance are swallowed up. To its value as factual and evocative information, details add that of a total consuming expressiveness. [This] painting involves us in a visual as well as psychological journey in time..." "In much of this," writes Ms.Shadbolt, "one is reminded of other twentieth century eccentrics. But Freifeld's real references are to be found among the northern Europeans from van Eyck, Schongauer, and Altdorfer, to Durer and Rembrandt." Eric Freifeld's career as teacher was no less distinguished than his achievement as a painter. Gerrit Verstraete, founder of the Drawing Society of Canada, was one of Eric's students during his studies at the Ontario College of Art from 1964 to 1968. "Eric Freifeld was probably the finest and most influential instructors I ever had," says Verstraete, "and I owe much of my passion for figure drawing to him." The basis of Freifeld's teaching is drawing. He fought to keep life drawing in the curriculum when it was threatened by more purely design-oriented pressures. Among Freifeld's students were renowned Canadian artists such as the cartoonist Duncan Mcpherson, illustrator Will Davies, animator Richard Williams, designer Chris Yaneff, sculptor William McElcheran, painters Tom LaPierre, John Newman, Ken Danby, John Gould, William Kurelek, Peter Harris, David Blackwood, Hugh MacKenzie, John Englis and John Labont-Smith. Some 25 one-man exhibitions took place in Eric's lifetime. His awards include five from the Canada Council, and his works are represented in collections of Brook Street Galleries, London, England; The Montreal Museum of Arts, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the University of Toronto's Hart House, Vancouver Art Gallery, the Arthur Benjamin Collection, and private collections in Canada, England, United States, Israel, Australia, France, Switzerland, Austria and Ireland. Nevertheless, Eric's life was plagued by bouts of deep depression. In September 1984, at the age of 65, Eric ended his own life. In 1986, a posthumous retrospective exhibition was held in two successive galleries: the Rodman Hall Arts Centre, St.Catherines, and the Art Gallery of Ontario. The exhibition was curated by the late Peter Harris, one of Eric's former students. Eric Freifeld is also the subject of an extensive and well-illustrated monograph by the noted critic Paul Duval ( Eric Freifeld, Paul Duval, The Yaneff Gallery, Toronto, London, 1977 ).


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Yetvart (Ed) Garbis-Yaghdjian was Born to Armenian parents in Cairo, Egypt, in 1937. He received his primary and secondary education at Victoria College, Cairo and at The English School, Cairo.

Since early childhood he had shown special aptitude for drawing, and when In 1948, a first family trip to Europe with stops in all the great Museums of Rome, Florence, Paris and London, brought him face to face with the Old Masters of painting and sculpture of the Renaissance and the periods that followed, he was obsessed with the desire to learn how to paint and draw like them.

On the family’s return to Egypt, at age eleven, Ed began his formal art training, in Cairo, in the classic atelier manner, under the tutelage of Master Painter Achod Zorian in the latter’s studio. Later, in his post secondary years, he continued his art training at Cairo University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and at the Leonardo Da Vinci School of Art, also in Cairo. At various times, over a period of twenty years, he continued to frequent Zorian’s atelier until he moved to Canada with his family in 1968, and settled in Toronto where he resides.

Ed completed his education in Canada at University of Toronto whence he graduated with a BA hons. and at Brock University where he received his BA in Education. After a teaching career spanning thirty years, he retired to devote himself fully to his lifelong passion for drawing and painting.

Ed is a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, the Portrait Society of America, and Oil Painters of America. He has exhibited widely in solo and group shows, receiving numerous awards along the way. Ed works mainly with oil and describes himself as a contemporary classic painter. Finding his inspiration in nature, he strives to capture the forms, patterns, rhythms, colour relationships and other aesthetic elements underlying its beauty. Without sacrificing artistic integrity or sinking into the banal, he strives to create Images that capture “the beauty, the moment and the experience”.

Masters, old and new who have influenced his development are Boucher, Dali, Payne, Picasso, Rembrandt, Sargent, Titian, Velazquez, Whistler, A.Wyeth, Zorn, among others.

Following a timeless classic tradition, his work is an attempt to capture and redefine in contemporary terms, subject matter that is an intrinsic part of the universal human experience.

Website: www.ygarbis.com / Email: yyaghdjian@rogers.com


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Constantine Gedal born in the snows of no-man's land Constantine liked to spend hours looking into the ice that is how some say he's got his name (meaning stable, permanent) though others suggest that he was just a schizophrenic.Fleeing Tartar-Mongol invasion, Constantine moved to Europe, where he became good friends with Loyola, with whom he went to the Holy Land. Though Loyola was sent right away, Constantine was allowed to stay for a while to learn local traditions and languages.

Having heard of the preparations of the new crusade he departed for Köln to arrive there a month too late to prevent a campaign that later proved to be disastrous. However, his journey was not all in vain. In the Northern Europe, he got involved in an art movement that was to become known as Flemish Art. During that time, he was a regular guest at Van Eyck's and Van der Goes's. Later Gedal frequented Bruegel with whose son he used to have bitter misunderstanding over a neighbor-girl.

As the Renaissance came late to the northern parts of Europe, it mainly passed Gedal, however few works of the Italian masters seen by him were highly appraised.
Having learned about the New World he sailed west and settled on shores of the Western Indies.

Detailed biography is withheld by request of the artist.
Website: www.gedalstudio.com
Drawings are untitled from the “Migrations” series.


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Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, David Gluck currently resides on Vancouver Island with his wife, Kate Stone, where they work as full time artists. He received his Bachelors of Science degree in Art Education from Penn State University in 2006, following which he immigrated to Canada to continue his career as an artist. His artwork is in both private and public collections around the world. These days David exhibits with S.R. Brennan Galleries in Palm Desert, CA, Gallery 1261 in Denver, CO, and with M Gallery of FIne Art in Charleston, SC


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John Gould was born in Toronto in 1929. During highschool years in the 40's he was a cartoonist for Canadian High News and played jazz clarinet with The Three G's an Owen Sound group. In 1948 he enrolled at the Ontario College of Art and graduated in 1952. Throughout the 50's John Gould traveled extensively through Europe stopping at galleries and museums en route. In 1954 while working in display for Taylor Advertising in Montreal, he showed some paintings at the Arts Club. In addition to a growing career in the arts, John managed to work on an installation project for television relay towers on Dog Mountain in Hope, BC. In 1957 he joined the CBC paint shop as a scenic artist. After a 1960 Elizabeth T. Greenshields Fellowship for figurative painting and a trip to Spain, John Gould held his first one-man show at Dorothy Cameron's "Here and Now" Gallery in Toronto in 1961. Large scale drawings of the 60's offered corrida compositions - single figures and cathedral facades. Gould continued with black-and-white dry brush oil drawings of various subjects. From free abstract shapes and fragments of figures in his "Ancestor Series" of the mid-sixties, on location drawings in Mexico and the Andes, a venture into a second career as film maker, to a long impressive list of exhibitions, John Gould continued to create "major works that go far beyond drawing as we commonly understand it", said Alan Jarvis of Canadian Art in 1961. In 1966 he began exhibiting at the Roberts Gallery in Toronto. The Japanese Theatre exhibition led to a commission by Marcel Marceau, the celebrated mime, to draw his character "Bip". Beginning in the seventies John's work included detailed cross-hatching with a dramatic shift to a pictorial style filled with autobiographical fragments, film sources and literary references. His latest works include collage which, as his previous "puddled gouaches" , begin as total abstraction and finish as a fusion of design and finished drawing. John Gould lives with his wife Ingi in Barrie, Ontario. A selection of drawings ( 1959-1979 ) is published in "John Gould -The Drawn Image" ( available from the Roberts Gallery ) and John Gould's memoirs are published in "John Gould Journals" ( Moonstone Books, 10 Oren Blvd. Barrie ON L4N 4M1). John Gould is represented by the Roberts Gallery of Toronto (416)924-8731, Master's Gallery in Calgary, Alberta (403)245-2064, Peter Ohler Fine Art Ltd. in Vancouver, BC (604)263-9051 and in the U.S. by the Preston Burke Gallery in Detroit, Mich. (248)549-5171.


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Mark Gothreau was born in 1964, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Mark Gothreau discovered his natural talent for art at the age of three. His mother, who is also an artist, encouraged Mark with paper and pencil at playtime. It was easy to see, that even at an early age, Mark's skills as an artist continued to improve. During his years in elementary school, Mark would spend his free time searching the small school library for wildlife pictures, which was his focus of interest at the time. He would also be found at the museum sketching the wildlife displays, much to the delight of others. In 1978 Mark had one of his drawings published in a children's magazine.

At the age of twelve, Mark Gothreau began displaying and selling his artwork at exhibitions. At fifteen one of his exhibitions was a three-generation show at the Dartmouth Heritage Museum, which included the work of his grandfather, his mother and Mark. In his early teens Mark designed his Junior High School's new logo. He also helped to design and paint an eight-foot by twenty-four foot war memorial for the Royal Canadian Legion's anniversary. Mark went on to University where he graduated with a degree in Business Administration. While at university, Mark continued to draw for personal pleasure, as well as being commissioned by others.

It wasn't until 1987 that Mark decided to fully concentrate on that which truly made him happy, his art! In 2004, he produced a calendar of buildings and scenes from the town of Bedford, Nova Scotia. It was so well received that he will reproduce it for 2005 as well as add a calendar of Nova Scotia lighthouses to his collection. He is always open new projects and enjoys helping out his clients achieve their goals as well as creating art from a simple pencil. Mark, who is entirely self-taught, continues to explore various subject matters, concentrating on detail and realism. He is asked to draw many homes and pets for gifts. He specializes in landscapes, seascapes and buildings of nostalgic or historical nature. Today Mark continues to work from his home in Lower Sackville and attends many craft festivals. His work can be views in his gallery at www.markgothreau.com.


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In 2004, Paul Gross accepted an invitation of the Drawing Society of Canada to become an honourary member of the society, because of his passion for the arts. He is an acclaimed Canadian actor on stage, television and in film, as well as artist, musician, writer, producer and director.

The oldest of two brothers, Paul was born in 1959 in Calgary , Alberta . His father, Bob Gross, was a Tank Commander in the Canadian Army. Every 18 months the family moved around: from Canada to England to Germany and the U.S. and then back to Canada . In was in his early teens while in Washington that he was introduced to acting, doing plays such as Canturbery Tales and Faustus . At age 14, he was doing TV commercials. Another move ended up with the Gross family in Toronto , and Paul graduated from the Earl Haig Secondary School . The continuation of TV commercials enabled him to pay for higher education. He studied acting at the University of Alberta in Edmonton , and graduated with a degree in Drama.

When Paul was 15 years old, he was given an Opportunities for Students grant that paid for a summer at the Stratford box office, where he was very impressed by what he witnessed. He vigorously pursued Canadian regional theatre and began writing. His first play, The Deer and the Antelope Play , won the Clifford E. Lee National Playwriting Award and the Alberta Cultural Playwriting Award. His second play, The Dead of Winter , did exceptionally well at the Toronto Free Theatre. He was then invited by artistic director John Neville to be the playwright- in-residence at the prestigious Stratford Festival, where his play Sprung Rhythm , was produced in co-operation with the Toronto Free Theatre. He held the same position, under artistic director Robin Phillips, at the Grand Theatre Company in London , Ontario . Paul's other play, Thunder, Perfect Mind , was produced by the Toronto Free Theatre and ran for a year at Toronto 's McLaughlin Planetarium. His writing skills soon extended to television. He earned a 1986 Gemini nomination for Best TV Drama for his screenplay of "In This Corner," an episode of the CBC series For the Record . He also penned the critically acclaimed CBC drama Gross Misconduct about the life of hockey player Brian Spencer. Paul's film and television appearances have been numerous, and his characters just as varied. He has run the gamut: from quiet farm hands ( Getting Married in Buffalo Jump ) to dead rock stars ( Whale Music ), as well as a skeptical minister in Buried on Sunday. His television appearances have been just as diverse. He appeared in the Kirk Douglas role in CBS's remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea , as a yuppie in the hilarious Canadian handyman show, Red Green , and has appeared in two miniseries, Chasing Rainbows and Tales of the City . Besides film and television, Paul has earned accolades for his stage performances. He won a Dora Award for Best Performance in the title role of Romeo and Juliet (1985) and a Dora Award for Best Performance for his role in the 1988 North American premiere of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Toward the Somme . However, it was his role as upright Constable Benton Fraser, the principled Mountie who, along with detective Ray Vecchio, helped bring peace to the streets of Chicago in the CBC/CTV television series due SOUTH, that brought him worldwide popularity and new fans. However, even Paul Gross will point out that he is not the Mountie the fans see on the TV screen. He's strongly opinionated, which shows in his interviews, and he has yet to kick the smoking habit. He performed his own stuntwork on Due South but only within reason, as he enjoys the physical activity and challenge. When Due South was aired for a third and final season, Paul returned as Benton Fraser, and also assumed new duties as Executive Producer and writer. He wrote several episodes of the last season of the series. Paul's acclaim continued with the television mini-series H2O , a gripping two-part political thriller that premiered on Sunday 31 Oct. 2004 , on CBC Television, and concluded the following night. This four-hour mini-series was a major event in CBC Television's season, and was one of the most controversial dramas ever telecast to Canadian audiences. Then came the 2003 television series "Slings & Arrows," based in the fictional town of New Burbage where legendary theatrical madman Geoffrey Tennant (Paul Gross) returns to the New Burbage Theatre Festival, the site of his greatest triumph and most humiliating failure, to assume the Artistic Directorship after the sudden death of his mentor, Oliver Welles

Despite his busy schedule, he has made time for one of his other passions: music. He studied classical guitar as a teenager. In 1989, he was writing rock 'n' roll lyrics and performing with his band, the Bone Men. In the Fall of 1997, he and writing partner David Keeley released their country-western album Two Houses . He has made numerous music videos. Paul is married to stage actress Martha Burns, whom he met in 1983, while they were both in the play Walsh . She played an Indian Princess and he portrayed a Mountie. Martha is well known for her performances at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, and guest starred in the third season Due South episodes, "Spy vs. Spy" and "Call of the Wild." Paul also lends his hand to numerous charitable events, and hosting duties, such as the annual Gemini Awards. To relax, he reads, or goes fishing and camping. He also enjoys skiing and horseback riding. He wrote a movie about curling entitled Men with Brooms , which opened in 2002. In late 1999, he appeared in the Canadian telemovie Murder Most Likely , based on the real life incident of ex-Mountie Patrick Kelly, who was convicted of the murder of his wife. This movie is the first from his new production company, WhizBang Films, and was featured on the cover of many television magazines when it aired. Paul Gross also took on the title role of the Stratford Festival ( Ontario ) production of Hamlet . This play marked his debut at this illustrious Shakespeare Festival. Hamlet opened to critical acclaim. In mid-August of 2000 he participated in a mini festival entitled "A Wilde Celebration," in which he did a one-time, two-hour presentation entitled The Picture of Dorain Gray.


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Andrew Hamilton was born in Scotland in 1963. He has been drawing from an early age and was encouraged by his artistic parents. His mother was the first women to go to The Glasgow School of Art. Andrew's roots have been drawing and he only knew drawing before he entered OCAD. Having he enrolled in the design courses he soon quickly switched to the fine art disciplines of drawing and painting. These two disciplines allowed him to combine his love for strong drawing, composition and design elements and to co-mingle these with expressive colour and form. According to Andrew: "I feel drawing is an expressive and elemental form of art creation. Drawing is the essential principle of my art but it is also the architecture on which I hang all the other elements of painting in the creation of my art pieces." Andrew has fallen in love with his new homeland Canada. Using various media and traveling extensively, Andrew captures the rhythms, colors and moods of the landscape that inspires him. Andrew studied in Victoria and four years at OCAD. He presently lives in Toronto and maintains a studio in Stouffville. Andrew is presently retracing Tom Thomson's canoe routes through Northern Ontario. Andrew has embarked on a new and exciting challenge at St Lawrence College as Curator of the Marianne van Silfhout Gallery and Fine Arts Professor and Faculty Advisor. Andrew is also the director of the Markham School of Fine Art and also teaches at the Uxbridge school of Art. Andrew is an accomplished painter in acrylic, oil and Watercolor mediums. Using a highly imaginative palette of the three primaries plus white Andrew has learned that all the colors of the universe are at hand. Combining this with a loose, inventive colorful style and with great freshness and immediacy he paints the landscape. Painting mostly on location ( en plein air ), Andrew paints in all four seasons capturing the beauty and natural rhythms of each. Andrew has painted from coast to coast traveling painting and capturing in paint this vast land. Andrew also runs his highly popular summer school of art called ArtVentures where he teaches outdoor landscape painting in Unionville and the Toronto islands and Quebec City. Andrew will also be Artist in residence at Presquile Provincial Park this summer for a full week of painting and interaction with residents, artists and patrons. Andrew's work can be seen at the Masterpiece Art Gallery in the beach of Toronto, the Green Goose gallery in Uxbridge and his own gallery, the Northern lights Gallery in Stouffville and public and private collections nationally and internationally. He is Professor of Fine Art and Director of Markham and Durham School of Fine Arts as well as President of Ontario Watercolour Society. For more information see www.andrewhamilton.ca


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Randy Hann was born in 1961, in Twillingate , Newfoundland . During his early teens he moved, with his family, to Toronto , Ontario . After several years of living and working in Toronto , he met and married his wife Tracey. They eventually moved back to Newfoundland with their two children. Randy can always remember being able to draw, even as a child. Whether it was a funny portrait for a friend or a special school project, he always got the call. He didn't really take his ability to draw seriously until years later. Being entirely self-taught, Randy has taken many years developing and refining his technique and style. He loves to draw and paint but his passion is for drawing. Most of his finished works are graphite on paper. Randy's inspiration is found in his own family life and in the picturesque place where he lives. Both play a very important part in his work and are evident in many of his drawings and paintings. He has interest in a wide variety of subject matter including people, wildlife, scenery, and portraits. Randy's work has been exhibited in several solo and group shows and, on many occasions, he has supported special charitable organizations by donating his work for sale or auction. His work can be found in many private collections across Canada and in other countries. Randy now lives and works in Carter's Cove, Newfoundland , where he shares his love for life, art, music, and nature with his family. To contact Randy, or to view his artwork, visit his website at www.randyhann.com.


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Brenda Hill was born and raised in Vancouver, B.C. and she has been working exclusively in graphite pencil since March 1993, creating emotions and expressions in figurative and non-figurative drawings. She has participated in numerous juried art shows and she exhibits regularly including galleries in Fort Langley, Toronto, Ottawa and Edmonton. Her art work is in private and public collections and has sold internationally. In January 2008, she was featured in Wildlife Art Magazine as well as Artists of British Columbia, Volume 3. She has been an active member of the Federation of Canadian Artists since May 2006. "The art of pencil as the artist's passion," is Brenda Hill's focus. "I love the delicate and simple versatility of pencil rendering, being able to create a detailed drawing using only the subtle shades of grey to black, and letting my heart and mind and the viewer's heart and mind visualize the colours." Artist Website: www.myartclub.com/Brenda.Hill  Email: beehill@shaw.ca


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Ronan Kennedy was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1962. After finishing high school he studied fine art at the Alberta College of Art in Calgary in 1981. While at art college he majored in drawing and painting. In 1985, he had the opportunity to visit Newfoundland, and it was love at first sight, especially the ruggedness that was so similar to many parts of Kennedy's native Ireland. From as early as 7 years old when he began taking drawing classes he has developed his passion for drawing, and ever since, for over thirty-five years he has been drawing. He continues to maintain a busy sketchbook and drawing portfolio with an emphasis on the human portrait and character in focus. "I like to leave the viewer with an ambiguous feeling from some of the works that involve two or more subjects, even to the point of doing 'surgery' or 'facial reconstruction' - that is to say, I will take the eyes of one subject and add them to the face of another subject and choose the hair from yet another." Today, Ronan Kennedy's studio is located in St. John's, Newfoundland. Everyone is encouraged to visit his website at   www.ronankennedy.com


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Kerry Kim was born in 1956, in Inchon, South Korea. He regards drawing as a vehicle for exploration of chaotic visual reality while he does not imbue his works with symbolism, nor does he merely record what he sees. Rather, he draws out the structural movement within the human form, thus conveying thoughts and emotions that otherwise could not be elucidated. Kerry approaches painting with the same attitude focusing on structural movement and composition. He works both in oil and watercolour. Kerry graduated from OCAD and taught at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Dundas Valley School of Art, Sheridan College, Centennial College and Ontario College of Art and Design. He is presently the director of Mississauga Valley School of Art. His artwork can be seen at “faculty” at www.thirstybrush.com official website of the Mississauga Valley School of Art.


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John Howe was born in 1957 in Vancouver and grew up in southwestern British Columbia . He attended the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg , France  and now lives in Switzerland with his wife and son. His web site : www.john-howe.com

"First Things First"

On the living room wall there was a pencil rendering of the Castle of Chillon , near Lake Geneva , done by my grandmother at age 19, before she embraced the more acceptable career of schoolmistress and never did another picture in her life... I can't remember ever not drawing. My mother would do her best to help with the more ambitious renderings, but around primary school age, her draughtsmanship was no longer up to my expectations. I remember bursting into tears of frustration when we both failed to draw a cow the way I wanted. School itself was a mixed blessing; it seemed we always moved house at just the wrong time of the year, and l ended up in power mechanics, hating every minute, because naturally, all the non-academics too dull even for metal shop were already parked in art class... It was a handy skill in biology, though, where a friend and I would do rapid and rather creative rendering of microscopic water organisms for richer but less artistic classmates... at 50 cents a shot. I collected paperbacks for the covers, and even read what was inside. Frank Frazetta assumed demigod status, and was the object of dozens of copies in oil pastel. This was before the Ballantine editions, so his paintings were only available on book covers. No musty second-hand paperback pile went unturned. Around the same time, Barry Smith's Conan and Bemi Wrightson's Swamp Thing meant going into drugstores where I wouldn't run into anyone I knew, buying kid's comics too far into adolescence. Around that time I read The Lord of the Rings , first The Two Towers , and then The Return of the King . It seemed that everyone who started the first volume never got any further, as it was by far the most borrowed of the three. I had to wait months to get it. The real spark came from the calendars, which showed me that it could be illustrated. I went through the Hildebrandt calendar, doing my own versions of the same scenes. Mercifully, none of these have survived, although there is a very dusty box under a bed somewhere... A year after graduating from high school, I was in a college in Strasbourg , France , and the following year in the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs. The first year was spent not understanding much, the second at odds with what I did manage to understand, and the third eager to get out, although in retrospect I certainly owe whatever clarity of thought I possess to the patience of the professor of Illustration. Otherwise, my first years in Europe were a constant overdose on all forms of art and architecture, everything being simultaneously ancient and novel. All that catching up to do. Nothing I did from those years has survived, thank goodness, as scrupulously put it all in the trash at term end before heading back home to the summer job that would pay next year's fees. The only exception must be "The Lieutenant of the Black Tower of Barad-dûr", which, if not my first published piece, must certainly be the earliest. It seems to me that a lot of my early commissions were nightmares - political cartoons, magazine illustrations, comics, animated films, advertising - starting one cover seven times, redoing sketches so many times there was nothing of mine left in them, wondering just how the devil I'd ended up in this profession. In the attic there is a huge box taped very tightly shut and marked DO NOT OPEN (EVER!!!) in wide-tip felt pen. I honestly feel no real urge to do so. The other day we took a friend to visit the Castle of Chillon . It's easy enough to find the spot to stand in my grandmother's drawing. I wonder if we ever really make any choices of our own - so many years and miles to end up in a picture that was always there on the wall.

( This text is taken from " Myth & Magic ", HarperCollinsPublishers, 2001)


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Tom La Pierre (1930–2010). Tom La Pierre was born in Toronto in 1930. In 1955 he graduated, with honours, from the Ontario College of Art, winning the G.E.Leitch Traveling Scholarship. This scholarship enabled him to study for one year, at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. There he concentrated on figure drawing, painting, and lithography. As a young student at OCA, his chief mentors were John Alfsen, Frederick Hagan, and Eric Freifeld. La Pierre greatly admires, and has been influenced by, the Flemish, Italian and German artists of the 15th century including Bosch, Breugle, Van der Goes, Van Der Weyden, and Lukas Cranach, to name a few. In the twentieth Century, Max Beckmann, Stanley Spencer, George Grosc, Ivan Albright, and Lucien Freud, are among his favourites. These masters as well, learned from the early masters. La Pierre was an instructor at the Ontario College of Art from 1958 to 1995. He believed in the value of teaching young would-be artists. As a great image maker and individualist, he is remarkably prolific as draftsman, printmaker and painter. Eric Freifeld wrote of La Pierre's art: "his imagery is strong, often complex and compelling. His themes are powerful, at times dissonant and even disquieting. Unremittingly, they go to the heart of the human condition. Love, death, sex, fear and rage are embraced without demur. To experience La Pierre's art is to encounter in beautiful and very personal esthetic terms, the unalloyed truths of man's most profound emotions and concerns. His works possess a philosophical side, a psychological aspect, and an esthetic which emanates from these and is inseparably bound up with them. In La Pierre's paintings, the veil of daily pretense is stripped away, and we are confronted with a fierce awareness of the deepest intimacies of man's mind and spirit." La Pierre has exhibited extensively for almost 50 years, largely in Canada, but also in the United States, Europe, China, Korea, and South America. Awards include four OCA scholarships, Canada Council grants, CSPWC awards, and recently the Sun Life award given at the 90th anniversary of the Arts & Letters Club in Toronto. He has had 24 one-person exhibitions and has exhibited in inumerable group shows over the years. He has traveled extensively to study in galleries and museums in the United States and Europe, and to paint landscapes, in both oil and watercolour, particularly in Mexico, France, Italy and Greece. He has both a painting and print studio in his home in Mississauga, as well as a country studio in Golden Valley, Ontario, on a quiet lake. La Pierre has ignored the ever-changing art modes of the last half of the 20th century. Instead, he has followed his own individual path, as have the other 20th century figure painters mentioned.


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Peter Leclerc was born in Montreal in 1956. At a young age Peter knew that art would play a major role in his life. His earliest memories are of his mother oil painting in the livingroom of his family's home. However, convinced that the Sciences promised a more solid career, his parents enrolled him in Études Scientifiques in high school. Nevertheless Peter took every available elective course that was in any way related to art. After completing two years of pre-medical studies at college, he enrolled in the Fine Arts program of CEGEP St.Laurent in Montreal where in 1978 he earned recognition for his achievements and a diploma of collegial studies (DCS). In 1979 Peter attended the Victoria College of Art where he studiously accepted fine art's many challenges and as a result experienced tremendous growth. By 1982 and back in Montreal, he became a graphic artist for the Quebec Liberal Party. Peter soon realized, however, that the state of art in 1982 was about to be overtaken by the personal computer revolution, and that he had better get on board or be swept away in its wake. His introduction to the world of personal computing led him to training as a programmer and employment in his field. As an artist, he has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions with Le Groupe Expressionart in Montreal. Over the years, he continued to hone his skills through regular evening life drawing sessions. In 1993 he moved to Vancouver Island where he maintains an art studio in his home in Qualicum Beach. Peter is extremely optimistic about the future of art in general and of drawing in particular. He welcomes the opportunity of involvement with the Drawing Society of Canada. Peter Leclerc can be contacted at (res) 250-752-1567, or you can email him at
< peterleclerc@shaw.ca > Personal Website - www.peterleclerc.com


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Yousha Liu was born in 1960, in Zhejiang, China . She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at China Academy of Arts in 1982 and her Master of Fine Arts degree at Georgia Southern University in USA, in 2001. Yousha's professional experience began as an assistant curator at the Art Center of Hunan Province (1982-1985), followed by a position as assistant professor at the Zhejiang Academy of Painting in China (1985-1991). After her first solo show in Canada, Yousha relocated to Toronto and continued her creative life as an artist and art teacher (1991-1999). She taught studio art at Georgia Southern University (1999-2002), Iowa State University in USA (2002-2004), and gave private lessons in Canada. As a life long artist, Yousha has had numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally. Some of her notable exhibitions include: the Sixth National Art Exhibition of China at Beijing where she won the Bronze Medal (1984); the "beyond the Open Door" Chinese Art tour in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Huston (1986); the "New Artist and New Work" - solo exhibition at the National Art Museum of China (1988); the "Image 98" - 124 th Annual Open Juried Exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists in Toronto (1998); solo exhibition at Gallery Arcturus in Toronto (1999); and the Kingston Prize for Contemporary Canadian Portraiture (2005). Her work has been collected by private and public collectors worldwide, including the National Art Museum of China, the History Museum of Revolution of China, the Foundation for the Study of Objective Art in Toronto, Georgia Southern University, and the City of Statesboro in Georgia, USA . Informed by diverse cultures and a variety of techniques, Yousha can freely use her brush, charcoal, pen, or etcher's needle for expressive purposes. Her work has been published in numerous art books and magazines, including: the Modern Chinese Figure Painting, Henan Art Publish House, China 1992; Contemporary Chinese Women Painters , Foreign Language Press, Beijing, China1995; Journal of Critical Inquiry into Curriculum and Instruction, Wichita State University, KS USA1999; and a television interview by Toronto CFMT, TV Channel 47, Cultural Club Program, May 15, 1999. Yousha's water media painting also can be viewed at www.arcturus.ca . Yousha Liu lives and works in Mississauga, Ontario.


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Margaret Florence Ludwig, AOCA, PSC, was born in 1928, and for over half a century her art has grown into a sizeable and respected body of work. She is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art & Design ( 1947-1951), with additional studies including the Artist’s Workshop, Central Technical School, The Toronto School of Art, and York University. From 1977 to 1979 she was a teacher of sculpture as well at the Artist’s Workshop. Margaret Ludwig’s paintings and drawings are with collectors both in Canada and International. She is also a member of the Portrait Society of Canada, the Heliconian Club of Toronto, and the Arts & Letters Club. She was invited to participate in the Biennale in Arad, Romania, and one of Margaret’s painting’s was used in the movie, ‘Extreme Measures, the Life of Judy Garland.’ She is represented by many galleries in Ontario.
“All of my life, I have either drawn or painted. I began painting when I was eight years old. In Grade 7, a prize for a poster contest in Central Ontario, was a great inspiration for me. After graduating from High School, I came to Toronto from Peterborough, Ontario to attend the Ontario College of Art & Design. I studied there from 1947 and graduated in 1951. My two great loves are painting and drawing: painting in the freedom of the outdoors, and drawing and painting in the studio from the model. Burleigh Falls near Peterborough, Ontario, where I was born has become my favourite source of inspiration in Ontario. Working “en plein aire” is a thrilling and exciting experience. It is quite intriguing when you catch the moment of a painting with its beautiful and magnificent scenery surrounding you. Nature can never be repeated or caught by a camera. Snow, wind, ice and the searing sun are the elements that transform nature, as I see it, into vibrant and exciting paintings. Baffin Island, Newfoundland, the Queen Charlotte Islands, Greenland, USA and Mexico are the sources of many of my works. I have also been very fortunate to travel on recent trips to the Arctic, Antarctic and several areas of the United States of America as well as across Canada and Greenland. Together with disciplined studio work especially figurative drawing, these two loves have been most challenging and satisfying. Robert Henri stated in his book that ‘one must paint every day because one does not know when the masterpiece will occur. It is an uncontrollable force. We always strive to do better, repeat and create a masterpiece better than the time before’.”
Margaret Ludwig has exhibited extensively in solo exhibitions and group exhibitions and her work is counted among many private and corporate collectors. Biographical sketches of Margaret’s artistic journey have been included in such publications as Lifestyles magazine, Toronto Star, National Geographic, USA Today, and the Globe & Mail. Visit Margaret’s website at: www.mfludwig.com


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Peter Mah. His schooling in the arts began at the Ontario College of Art in 1966. He graduated with first class honours in 1970. He completed post graduate studies at Tyler School of Arts at Temple University in Philadelphia, USA from 1971 to 1972, followed by a Master of Fine Arts Degree in 1973 from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhose Island, USA. After completing his MFA, Peter Mah took upon himself the many challenges of an extensive carreer in the arts, a carreer that included numerous teaching positions at such institutions as the University of Guelph, Toronto School of Fine Arts, Ontario College of Art, as well as honourary professor at the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts, in Wuhan, in the People's Republic of China. A number of these teaching positions included participation in administration and committee services. He is co-founder and member of the Ontario College of Art Chinese Cultural Committee. His professional activities include numerous appearances on radio and television programs, and participation in conferences and symposia. Peter Mah is represented in private and public collections in Canada, USA, Italy, England, Hong Kong, and the People's Republic of China. He is represented commercially by the Kinsman-Robinson Gallery in Toronto. Six solo exhibitions, three two-man exhibitions and thirty-four group shows over twenty-five years, have taken Peter Mah from galleries in Toronto, Philadelphia, Montreal, Winnipeg, and Vancouver, to South Korea and the People's Republic of China. Peter Mah is an accomplished painter and drawing master. Drawing was the special focus of such shows as "Drawing Rediscovered" in 1974 at the Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal and again in 1976 at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. In 1978 Peter participated in the Ontario Figurative Drawing Exhibition at the Guelph University Gallery in Guelph, Ontario. In 1995 his work was exhibited at the International Contemporary Drawing Exhibition in Seoul, South Korea. He is listed in the "Canadian Dictionary of Artists," and "Who's Who in American Art," plus his story and work has appeared in consumer magazines, newspapers and numerous catalogues. Peter Mah lives and works in Toronto, Canada.


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Enid Maclachlan was born in 1923, in Wolverhampton , England . She attended the Ealing School of Art where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. During World Wa r II she served as a photographer with the Roy al Navy. In 1947, she met and married a Canadian sailor and moved to Canada . She has been a high school teacher, a trustee of the Art Gallery of Ontario , and has chaired the Art Commission of the City of Toronto . "Why these drawings?" referring to the ones she chose for the Gallery of Canadian Drawing Masters of the Drawing Society of Canada - she replied, "what has developed recently in the drawings is the result of a love for the human body and a passion for line. My early study of anatomy was absorbed. I have always watched and felt the line, sometimes fine, sometimes heavy, abstract, and mysterious. The line must be alive." Enid Maclachlan lives in Toronto , Ontario.


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Kavavaow Mannomee was born in Brandon , Manitoba in 1958 where his mother, Paunichea, was hospitalized for treatment of tuberculosis. He returned to Cape Dorset as a very young child and has lived there since. Kavavaow has demonstrated a range of stylistic abilities over the years - from the very literal to the more expressive. His thematic concerns include depictions of Inuit legends and mythology, Arctic wildlife and an interest in some of the more contemporary aspects of Inuit life. Kavavaow is represented by three images in this year's collection, two of which deal humourously with the precarious nature of the relationship between man and nature - a favourite theme of Kavavaow's. Fishermen's Folly (04-6) exaggerates the peril inherent in a life lived close to and dependent on the natural world, and The Great Escape (04-7) is the familiar 'fish story' of the one that got away. For several years Kavavaow has been involved in the co-operative's graphic arts program as a printmaker - first in the lithography studio and more recently in the stonecut studio. He is an accomplished and precise printmaker who enjoys the opportunity to demonstrate printmaking techniques to young artists and visitors to the studio. Kavavaow lives with his wife and son Peter in Cape Dorset . He is represented by Dorset Fine Arts at www.dorsetfinearts.com.

Rosemary Mihalyi - Her extensive background in several artistic disciplines richly informs the work of Rosemary Mihalyi. Born in 1954 in Toronto, Rosemary began her professional career as a costume designer in 1978. For the next twenty-two years she honed her design skills in theatre and film. In 1985 a move to the camera department fine-tuned her compositional and lighting skills. In 1991, with further training in fine arts and architectural drafting, Rosemary completed her years in the film business as a storyboard artist, illustrator and assistant art director. She trained in Florence, Italy and Toronto at The Angel Academy of Art, graduating in 2007. Shortly afterwards, two still life paintings were selected for exhibition in "Annigoni’s Legacy" held in London, England. Rosemary's time is divided between portrait commissions of both people and animals and figurative work for exhibition in 2010. One of the bodies of works in progress is figurative paintings of the talented young violinist, Dr. Draw in performance. She has recently finished a portrait commission of Ken Kirkby, artist and president of The Nile Creek Enhancement Society.

"The Biography of Carlo Collodi" was selected as one of the finalists from over 1600 entries in The Art Renewal Center's International 2007 Salon in New York. The International Museum of Contemporary Masters of Fine Art accepted "The Blind Luthier" for their juried Exhibition, Salon International 2008. The exhibition opened in April 2008 hosted by Greenhouse Gallery of Fine Art in San Antonio, Texas. Her charcoal drawing "Lost In Thought" was exhibited at Engine Gallery in The Distillery District. Rosemary has participated in both solo and group exhibitions since graduating and donates artwork to worthy causes every year. She has exhibited at Engine Gallery, Art Interiors, Gallery 133, The Toronto Public Gallery, Joseph D. Carrier Gallery, John B. Aird Gallery, The University of Toronto Faculty Club and recently a portrait was accepted for a juried exhibition at The Arts & Letters Club in Toronto.

Rosemary's work is in private collections in Amsterdam, Chicago, Hawaii, Hungary, Italy, Salt Spring Island, Toronto and Vancouver. She is a member of The Portrait Society of Canada, The Portrait Society of America, an elected member of Classical Realism Canada and recently an invited and accepted honourary member of The Drawing Society of Canada. More work can be vied omn her website at www.mihalyifineart.com


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Ortansa Moraru, MFA, B.Ed., was born in 1968, in Romania. After working as an Art Teacher at the “Marin Sorescu” High School of Arts in Craiova, Romania, she immigrated to Canada and worked in Toronto since 2002. She began doing woodcuts in 1987 under the supervision of Dafinel Duinea, a Romanian self-taught printmaker. Ortansa earned her MFA and B. Ed. in 1997 from The Western University of Timisoara having Constantin Catargiu as her Lithography Professor. From Suzana Fantanariu, Ortansa learned drawing, composition and the hand-pulled woodcut technique. She was awarded with the first scholarship in 1993, at the 4th European Biennial of Fine Arts Academies in Maastricht, the Netherlands, in the Masterclass Section, with Professor Luciano Fabro. Another two scholarships were awarded to her from the “Dante Alighieri” Cultural Society in Rome, Italy, in 1996 and 1998. She is a professional artist with exhibitions across Europe, Asia and North America. Since her arrival in Canada, Ortansa was awarded with the Third place prize in Italy at the IV International Biennial of Graphic Arts, Francavilla al Mare in 2006. In addition she received the Juror’s Award in 2007, at the Glenhyrst Art Gallery, at their Juried Drawing Exhibition, Brantford, and Third Prize-Abstract at The Society Of Canadian Artist’s 41st Open Juried National Exhibition at Todmorden Mills’, Papermill Gallery. Recently, she received the  Arts & Social Justice Award of the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada presented by the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. She is a member of the Society of Canadian Artists and Ontario College of Teachers. “Printmaking has always been a special medium to me.” Her inspiration comes from her surroundings. “For printmaking, one must have good eyesight, good hands, and a lot of attitude,” she adds. Ortansa Moraru also enjoys drawing which she considers to be of central importance and which has been strongly influenced by her work in lithography. She moves easily between painting, drawing, and printmaking, with each medium opening a new way for her to describe the world around her. “Empty spaces and the spirit fascinate me,” she says. Always analyzing what she sees or does, she wonders if the process of creating art is not a process of self-discovery. Everything that influences Moraru, every defining moment of her life becomes a part of that unique process for the artist. Her relief printmaking is one of many diverse ways in which she expresses herself. With a zinc plate on her workbench, she becomes an explorer. The sort of exploration that gives her a special freedom of the mind and a heightening of the soul. Moraru considers such explorations to be a truly amazing feeling, to be lost in the material world. Her new paintings do not have much in common with her older prints since most of her recent artwork is inspired by her newly discovered Canadian landscape. However, printmaking, which has given her such interesting experiences in the past, continues to challenge her, because the longer she explores the art form, the more it requires an entirely different way of thinking. The qualities and possibilities inherent to various printmaking processes combined with the ability to make multiples of an image, have always fascinated Moraru. Early in her career, she had been exposed to the relief printing, particularly linocuts, and her first teacher was Dafinel Duinea. Now Moraru works in many materials and formats, creating unique impressions using techniques, such as monotype and variable editions as well. She concludes, “as an artist, printmaking is my focus area and my art, and by its very nature, is therefore autobiographical.” Her art can be viewed at www.ortansa.com


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Autumn Skye Morrison : "My purpose is to create. It is my stillness and rhythm, my teacher and passion. I start with fragments and work intuitively, not clinging to outcome or a completed concept. Texture, colour, and mixed media bring the work into our space, making an interactive sensory experience. My intent is to reveal a symbiotic relationship between artist, muse and viewer; to create an intimate rendezvous. I wish to portray spiritual essence in physical and realistic form. The paint shapes the light and shadow of our human beauty, in its perfect imperfection; our ancient memories and our sublime awakening."

Autumn Skye Morrison was born in Springhill , Nova Scotia in June of 1983. Her childhood was scattered across Canada as her family gradually made their way West. It was enriching to see the country in such variety and detail. Her father settled in the small town of Field in the Yoho Valley of the Rocky Mountains . Her mother and stepfather built their home between Powell River and Lund on British Columbia's, "Sunshine Coast". Spending her seasons between the majesty of the mountains and the serenity of the ocean and lush forests, Skye developed a deep appreciation for natural beauty. As soon as she was old enough to hold a pencil, she would spend countless hours playing with colours and figures. Since her childhood stick men she has been drawn to the human form, and to this day she strives to capture its life and essence. Skye has traveled throughout North America , Mexico , and South East Asia , spellbound by unfamiliar landscapes and the cultures therein. Inspired, the impressions linger with her when she returns home. There she picks up her paints and brushes and merges emotion and colour. In July 2005 she joined three partners and opened a music and arts café in Powell River , called Local Locos . It has become a community stronghold for creativity and self expression. You can visit Autumn Skye's website at www.autumnskyemorrison.com

From the founder of the Drawing Society of Canada : “Autumn Sky Morrison is the youngest of our distinguished list of honourary members. I am very pleased to have her work and journey featured in our online ‘Gallery of Canadian Figurative Masters.' It is also my hope that other artists, young and old and in between, will be inspired by her artistic skill as well as her passion to create.” Gerrit Verstraete.


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Wendy Mould lives in Surrey, on the west coast of BC, where she has been following her creative journey for over thirty years. Wendy graduated from UBC as a teacher and worked with students with learning disabilities for most of her career. Creating “things” has always been a big part of her life; she started with fiber and fabric but once she found drawing she knew she had found her true voice. Wendy’s favorite mediums are graphite and ink with watercolor. The soft touch of graphite and the crisp line of ink pull her into her work and keep her excited. Wendy’s work consists of realistic drawings often blended with color but sometimes she uses a touch of the abstract element to see them to completion. When she is working on birds or animals, she prefers graphite to provide the values and texture to “bring them to life,” but old logs and trees seem to cry out for ink. Wendy’s inspiration comes from Emily Carr, like her, she likes to work en plein aire. Each summer she heads out with her husband, Steve and dog, Rusty to paint and draw. Like Emily, she loves to find an interesting place to work and camp for a few weeks so she can really see what is there and develop several pieces. There is nothing more exciting than setting up on a log on the beach or a stump in the bush to create her work. As Wendy puts it "when you are there everything works with you; sounds, smells and emotions, time just disappears."

A selection of Wendy’s work can be seen on her web site www.artbywendy.com and her current work on her blog www.artbywendysblog.blogspot.com. She can be reached at artbywendy@shaw.ca


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John Newman was born in Toronto in 1933. In 1956 he graduated with honours from the Ontario College of Art. He is a widely respected and internationally exhibited artist. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy and past Chairman of the Fine Art department at the Ontario College of Art and Design. His career is distinguished by solo exhibitions including the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence Italy and the Canadian Embassy in Rome. Two of the most prestigious juried exhibitions in the world, "The Royal Academy" in London and the "Salon 77" in Paris, exhibited his work. The craftsmanship and sophistication of his compositions and sustained figure drawings place him among some of the finest figurative painters of the 20th century. John Newman captures his subjects with confidence and ease including a highly personal interpretation and vision that is uniquely his own. He is devoted to drawing and painting whether in watercolours, pastels, oils and mixed media with a concentration on the human form. He is a consummate student, having studied the drawings of both old and modern masters since he was a teenager. His studies have taken him to England, Holland, Italy, France, Spain and Germany. Even today, in his Markham Street studio in Toronto, he continues in the tradition of these masters. By 1973 he had developed a vocabulary of symbols which combined with his strength as a draughtsman and painter enabled him to sensitively portray his individual figures. Awards include a scholarship to do post graduate work at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, the Canada Council for study abroad, the John Alfsen Award and Honour Award for best work in an exhibition by the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour.

His work can be found in private and corporate collections such as the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Imperial Oil, Wood Gundy, Confederation Life, Art Gallery of Algoma, Rodman Hall Arts Centre and Institute Peto in Budapest Hungary, just to name a few. One man and group exhibitions in Canada include major centres in Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland and Alberta, as well as international centres such as Budapest, Seoul, New York, London and Paris. In 1988 John traveled to China as part of a cultural exchange to Beijing hosted by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. While in China John lectured as well as exhibited work. John Newman "roams with a hungry heart" seeking to express his inner feelings rather than merely to convey a painterly expression of the external world. To that effect he has made a lasting contribution to art for generations to come. John Newman and his wife Shirley live in Toronto on 552 Milverton Blvd. tel:(416)421-1219. He is represented at the following galleries.

Kinsman-Robinson Galleries, 108 Cumberland Street, Toronto, ON M5R 1A6, Tel:416-964-2374, 1-800-895-4278, Fax:416-964-9042: Gallerie D'Art Vincent, Chateau Laurier, Ottawa, ON K1N 8S7, Tel:613-241-1144, Fax: 613-241-7498: Gallerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., 1200 Ouest Rue Sherbrooke, Montreal, PQ H3A 1H6.

memorable quotes:

"In a school of fine arts, it is one's duty to teach only uncontested truths, or at least those that rest upon the finest examples accepted for centuries "

H.Flandrin, The Florence Academy of Art, Florence Italy.

"Methods of instruction should demand a return to discipline in art, to canons of beauty, and to the direct study of nature and the Old Masters as the foundation for great painting. Drawing corrently from nature ( the study of the human figure ) is a basic skill and the foundation to such great painting"

Daniel Graves, founder, the Florence Academy of Art

"Drawing is the honesty of art. To draw does not mean simply to reproduce contours: drawing does not consist merely of line. Drawing is also expression, the inner form, the plane and modeling. See what remains after that. Drawing includes three and a half quarters of the content of painting. If I were asked to put up a sign over my door I should inscribe it: School for Drawing, and I am sure that I should bring forth painters"

Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1780 - 1867, Director French Academy in Rome

"I am never satisfied with my drawing but am satisfied that I am getting closer all the time. I think one aspect of drawing that drives us to do more is that it defies perfection. It is at the root of the visual language and one can only be understood by doing it. It's mysteries can not be put in words. I believe that is why it is a problem for many critics and curators". John Newman, Nov.11,1999


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Myfanwy Pavelic ( 1916 – 2007 ) was born in 1916, in Victoria, British Columbia. She is one of Canada's best known portrait artists. Her drawings, collages and paintings, bring together, with keen perception, rhythm and sensitivity, the artist's love of music, art and literature, and of people, life and nature. As a child she traveled extensively and made galleries and museums high on her list of places to visit. In 1924 Myfanwy first met Emily Carr, who in 1931 was the first to invite Myfanwy, at age fifteen, to submit work to an exhibition she was co-ordinating. The recognition shown by Emily Carr was important and from it stemmed a relationship that would carry on to Emily's death in 1945. The subjects depicted in Myfanwy's childhood work reflect her later interests, including her first self-portrait, a drawing completed at age eight. People, herself and others, were and are of prime interest to her. The decade from 1932 to 1942 was a period of much travel during which she furthered her formal education in music and art. She attended Miss Edgar and Miss Cramp's School in Montreal as a boarder. In the mid-thirties she traveled and painted in England, Wales, and Brittany, after which she in 1940 lived in Vancouver. Her time in Vancouver brought her personal recognition as she received a medal for her work from the Vancouver Art Gallery. While in Vancouver she met pianist Jan Cherniavsky, painter Lawren Harris and art collectors and musician Gustav and Marie Schilder. The Second World War and Myfanwy's work for the Red Cross marked another step in her formative career as an artist. In 1942 she traveled across Canada to do portraits to raise money for the Red Cross war effort. The period also resulted in a resolve to work for a period away from the West Coast. That decision brought her to New York in 1943, and later again from 1956 to 1969, a beginning of her important creative work. In New York she lived in the Algonquin Hotel which became both home and studio. During this time painter Victor Tischler became a support for her as well as daily critique from Vittorio Borriello. After a few months in Victoria she returned to New York in 1947, to attend Malvina Hoffman's studio for further training. The New York works continued to foreshadow her later intimate portrayals of personal space. It was in New York that Myfanwy met and, in 1948, married Nikola Pavelic, a Doctor of Law who had come from Zagreb, Jugoslavia. His interest and support of her work have been strong and important to her. Myfanwy's life became full and produced many portraits. In 1950 she returned to Victoria for the birth of her daughter Tessa. Her first major exhibition at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria was held in 1953. Family needs necessitated a return to New York in 1956, where her painting and drawing never stopped. In 1969 she returned again to Victoria where she built her spaceous new studio on Spencerwood, the family's Vancouver Island property since her father first bought the land in the 1920's. In 1975 she was accepted as a member of the Royal Canadian Academy and in 1984 she received an honourary Doctorate from the University of Victoria and was awarded the Order of Canada. Exhibitions of Myfanwy's work have graced the walls of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Roberts Gallery in Toronto, the Pandora's Box, Utley Gallery, Backroom Gallery, and Print Gallery all in Victoria, a touring exhibition to Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia, Provincial Archives of British Columbia, the Shaw Rimmington Gallery in Toronto, Burnaby Art Gallery, Kamloops Art Gallery, Horizon Art Gallery in Edmonton, Barbican Centre in London, England, and many more, as well as studio exhibitions, with additional commissions from Victoria College, Her Majesty The Queen, and The Right Honourable Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Her work is created in all media including pencil, charcoal, oil, acrylic and collage. An important and central part of Myfanwy's work was her 1984-1985 "Relationship Series," a carefully planned significant body of work portraying a special intimacy between artist and sitter. A further degree of complexity was explored in her later "Mirror" series. Myfanwy Pavelic is celebrated as the woman who painted the estate portrait of Pierre Trudeau, a large painting now hanging in the House of Commons. Other subjects of her great portraits include legends of the 20th century such as violinist Yehudi Menuhin ( the painting hangs in Britain's National Portrait Gallery ), actor Katherine Hepburn, pianist Glen Gould, Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar. Critics and friends laude her as an artist blessed with the canny gift to capture the spirit - the very life essence - of the people she draws and paints. Although she's "tinkered" at times with abstraction, her style is unapologetically representational, something that's not particularly fashionable in the 21st century. It's brought her occasional criticism, although her friend, artist Herbert Siebner, contends that on Vancouver island she's "the only true artist except for Emily Carr." Myfanwy Pavelic is a truly gifted artist and one who will continue to make a significant contribution to Canadian art as she further penetrates the inner and outer worlds. Her passion for drawing as well as painting, as noted by Gerrit Verstraete, founder of the Drawing Society of Canada, when he visited Myfanwy in her studio, "is both encouraging and an affirmation of drawing's unique and valuable role in all visual arts."


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Julia Penny was born in 1955. She immigrated to Canada from England in 1967. After high school, Julia obtained a diploma in graphic design from George Brown College in Toronto. With her move to Regina, Saskatchewan in 1993, Julia began to explore and expand her artistic talent in a more focused way. She started with portraiture, and began taking commissions. In order to challenge herself, Julia offered portraits to popular political figures in Regina. She completed a portrait of Roy Romanow, former premier of Saskatchewan, and Pat Fiacco, the Mayor of Regina. Since 1993, Julia has participated in both group and solos shows. Her first solo show occurred in Regina in 2000. In late 2003, Julia moved to Manitoba. After participating in group shows at the Gwen Fox Gallery in Selkirk, she embarked on a solo show at the same gallery displaying forty works of art focusing on the theme 'Manitobans at Work.' She is a member artist at the cre8ery in Winnipeg. Julia works with a number of different media, including pencil, oil, acrylic and scratch art. Portraiture and the exploration of the human figure are her medium and her message. As an artist living in the Interlake Region of Manitoba, Julia is part of the Interlake Artists Studio Wave Tour. During the Wave Tour, she opens her studio to the public. People are invited to drop by her studio, located in Winnipeg Beach to see both completed art and works in progress. Interested parties can also make an appointment to visit Julia at her studio or contact her by email or phone.

www.juliapenny.com
artistjulia.penny@gmail.com
204-485-2339


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Dianna Ponting, was born in 1947, in the small Alberta mining town of Coleman. Her earliest memories, however, are of the fields, flowers, schools and friends in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. These childhood memories of life on the Canadian prairies are interwoven with the present to inspire work that is timeless and renowned for their realism and detail. Created using many different media, Dianna’s use of light, shadow and her ability to denote texture, combine with rich colour or subtle washes to result in a wonderfully distinctive drawing and painting style. Dianna is an international artist and pastel instructor with students and patrons in both North America and Europe It was her first love of Canadiana that resulted in an exciting invitation to display her works for the Queen of England, and visiting heads of state during the 1987 Commonwealth Conference. Dianna’s fondness for our heritage is evident in the stirring drawings and paintings she shares with all of us. In an image of a derelict automobile, children in a washtub, or flowers in an antique vase, one can sense her invitation to close our eyes, smile and remember when…. Her Vanishing Heritage Artworks studio is located in Bradner, BC. More of her work can be seen at www.ponting.com


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Annie Pootoogook is an emerging artist who began drawing in 1997. Born in 1969 in Cape Dorset , Nunavut , she is a member of an extraordinary artistic family. Her father, Eegyvadluq, was a talented carver and one of the first stonecut printmakers in the Kinngait Studios at Cape Dorset . Her mother, Napachie, was a committed graphic artist and long-time contributor to the annual print collections from Cape Dorset . Her grandmother, Pitseolak Ashoona, was one of the first to experiment with the new medium of drawing during the transition years when Inuit were leaving their traditional camps and moving to permanent settlements in the Canadian Arctic. Pitseolak went on to become one of the most prolific and highly respected Inuit graphic artists of her generation. Annie is an instinctive chronicler of her times. She shares this sensibility with her mother and her grandmother, both of whom used their drawings to communicate their way of life with an outside audience. Taken together, the work of these three women reveals the profound changes that have taken place among Inuit in Canada's far north over the span of the last 50 years. Annie's drawings reflect her experience as a contemporary female artist living and working in the changing milieu of Canada 's far north. Although firmly rooted to the specifics of her time and place, she manages to transcend cultural boundaries and present the details of her everyday life in an engaging way, inviting the viewer into both her public and private worlds. From the apparently mundane (the line-up for the ATM machine at the Co-op store, watching television with her family) to the personal and intimate (her experience with spousal abuse, the loss of her mother) Annie expresses a wide range of content and emotions. Although relatively new to the stable of Cape Dorset graphic artists, Annie's work has been represented in three commercial exhibitions since 2002, including her first solo exhibition at Feheley Fine Arts in Toronto in 2003 entitled "Moving Forward". Her work has attracted the attention of the prestigious Power Plant Gallery in Toronto , who are planning a solo exhibition for the fall of 2006. She is represented by Dorset Fine Arts at www.dorsetfinearts.com.


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Bernard Aimé Poulin was born in Windsor , Ontario in 1945. From the onset of his career Bernard Poulin's deft hand at creating sensitive yet powerful portraits quickly set the stage for his international reputation. Children and adults alike are rendered with sincere affection and respect, hallmarks of Poulin's empathy for those he loves to paint.
Though portraiture has always been his first love, Poulin is also well recognized for luminous landscapes and elegant still-life compositions emanating from his expeditions to Italy , France and Israel .

His work graces the walls of many private and corporate collections from the United States to Australia , from Beijing to London and from Canada to Bermuda . Poulin has rendered official portraits of royalty, the clergy, the judiciary, key academic as well as corporate and political figures.

Bernard Aime Poulin's apprenticeship officially began in 1967 while the launch of his full time professional career took place in 1978. During this eleven year span, he honed his technical skills and tested the critical waters of local, regional and national exhibiting. Poulin's strong design sense and sculptor's eye have brought about commissions incorporating two and three-dimensional surfaces and space. Several three dimensional murals can be seen in Ottawa , Canada . The artist enjoys blending paint with wood, marble, acrylic and sculpted bronze. As his medium of choice for more than thirty years, Bernard favours the attributes of translucent alkyd oils over the more popular acrylic colours.

A sought after lecturer, Poulin holds international workshops and conferences which are sold-out events. His educational television programs have been translated and distributed internationally. Bernard Poulin has also penned articles published in professional art magazines. He is the author of seven books, the last five published by North Light Books of Cincinnati, Ohio. His latest: " The Complete Colored Pencil Book ", (1992) was translated in Paris France , in 1995. This book has since sold 65,000+ copies. In the Spring of 2002, this same book was re-issued in soft-cover.

A recipient of several awards of merit, Bernard Poulin is also a member of the Bermuda Society of the Arts . He is presently the First Vice President of the Colored Pencil Society of America , is listed in the Who's Who of Canada and is a Senior Member of the Canadian Institute of Portrait Artists as well as its President. The " Bernard A. Poulin Scholarships" were created in 1990 by the Hadassah-Wizo Organization of Canada . He presently resides in Ottawa , Canada . His work can be seen at www.poulinstudios.com


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Nicholas M. Raynolds was born on December 25, 1967 , in Victoria , British Columbia , Canada . It was Nicholas' grandfather, who during a visit from Germany , inspired him to become an artist. His grandfather encouraged his fascination for drawing and painting and was influential in helping the young artist to develop two key fundamentals essential to good art; the skill of observation and the fine art of drawing. Nicholas Raynolds began his formal studies when he was only fifteen years old, at the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design where he later received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He continued his studies in Dusseldorf , Germany , and at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design in Halifax . His passion for mastering the craft of painting and the challenge of improving his skills led him to the Academy of Realist Art in Seattle , Washington . This was a major turning point in his life and career as an artist. From 1998 to 2000, he studied in Seattle with such noted artists as Tony Ryder and Michael Grimaldi. In January 2001, Raynolds moved to New York to study with Jacob Collins at the prestigious Water Street Atelier. He has traveled extensively throughout North America and Europe and to the Middle East , often working as a scenic and decorative painter. Perhaps most notable of these projects was assisting in the decoration of the palace and residence of His Highness Sheik Hamdan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi , United Arab Emirates . Nevertheless his heart is still Canadian even though home is Brooklyn , New York , where Nicholas lives with his wife and three cats.

"Drawing is the basis of all my work. Whether it is in preparation for a painting or as a work complete within itself. I think the ability of drawings' simplicity of means to convey the complex and subtle nature of a figure, a place, or an object is profound." says Raynolds. He has exhibited in Washington DC, New York, St.Simonds Island, Georgia, Houston, Texas and at the Comox Valley Art Gallery on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. His work can be found in collections in the U.S. and Canada, most notably in the Forbes Collection. In 2002, his painting appeared as the cover illustration for John Updike's book, "Seek My Face," ( Knopf Publishing ), and in 2003, Raynolds was featured with other artists in the premier issue of American Artists "Drawing" magazine in "Classical approaches to the teaching of drawing. "He is currently represented by the Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbour , NY at www.grenninggallery.com


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Steven Rhude ( 1959 ) Steven Rhude was born in Rouyn Noranda, Quebec in 1959. His father was a Royal Canadian Air Force Pilot and traveled extensively throughout Canada before settling his family in Scarborough , Ontario . In Scarborough, Steven was raised, educated and studied civil engineering at Centennial College . After one year he switched to the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto where he studied fine arts and graduated in 1983 with honors in drawing and painting. It was at OCAD where Steven was introduced to the pantheon of draughtsmen from Ingres to American modernists like de Kooning. Teachers such as Fred Hagen, John Gould and John Newman instilled in Steven the relevance of drawing as a complete form of expression in itself. Steven also attended the colleges off campus program in Florence , Italy for one year which included an intensive study of the Italian and Northern European renaissance. This year of study was made possible by receiving the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation award. Afterwards, he met Simone Labuschagne and they were married in 1986. Over a period of three years Steven worked at the Art Gallery of Ontario as a technician installing exhibitions, an experience he still recalls with appreciation due to his first-hand contact with master works of all kinds. In 1990, Steven began to devote himself to drawing and painting full time. He and his wife Simone, moved to Fox Island Main, Guysborough, County, Nova Scotia . It was there, in relative isolation, that Rhude developed the realistic and colorful style he is known for today. In 2007, he exhibited a 10 year retrospective of his work at Argyle Fine Art, Halifax , NS . Art critic Elissa Barnard stated "In this body of work Rhude has grappled with and further developed his subject matter, maintaining his engaging style but deepening his ideas and calling on the viewer to put more thought into the work and the plight of coastal communities in Atlantic Canada ". Up to the present, Steven Rhude has had numerous exhibitions in commercial galleries. He continues to have long term representation with Argyle Fine Art, in Halifax , NS . and is also represented by Gallery 78 in Fredericton , NB. and North Shore Canadian Art in Lunenburg , NS . In his work, Rhude continues to explore his passion for themes which evoke the ethos of coastal communities in Atlantic Canada, their social conditions and iconic character. Since moving to Lunenburg , NS . with his family, the town has been a primary source of subject matter and pride. Steven also played a role in the creation of The Art Galleries Association of Lunenburg which currently has nineteen gallery members, and he is a board member of The Lunenburg Arts Council. His work can be found in numerous private, public and corporate collections around the world. Steven's personal web page is www.stevenrhudefineart.com


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Danielle Richard lives in Quebec City, Canada, where she was born in 1954, and educated.Very early in life, she was fascinated by the world of pictorial art. For as long as she can remember, she has always been surrounded by the tools "for making works of art”: gouache, distemper, pastels, etc. Upon reaching adolescence, she wasted no time deciding on her future... “I loved painting and it seemed only natural for me to become an artist!” So she began her studies in art: a CEGEP degree in plastic arts, university studies in visual arts, semesters abroad, artist training trips… “I spent more and more time in the museums of Europe, which gave me the creative nourishment that both humbled me and inspired me on. Before a particularly striking work, it always seemed clear to me that I had to take up the quest for beauty and harmony that so many other artists had begun before me.” Her fascination with the singularity of light is something that has and will probably always inspire the works of Danielle Richard. She received grants from the Quebec government and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation on two occasions (Scholarships I and II). The first helped her to refine her knowledge of original lithography at the Dona Miro studio in Montreal, and the second made it possible to take a semester abroad on “Watercolor in English landscapes” at the University of Oxford in Great Britain. In 1994, she became the youngest artist to be featured in a retrospective at Villa Bagatelle in Quebec City. Each of her exhibitions has met with a warm and enthusiastic response from the public. She never ceases to be moved when she realizes “that after so much time spent in solitude putting to canvas these faces, places, and emotions, someone somewhere is touched” by her art. She says that she has enough projects and wonderful images stored in her mind to keep her busy for the rest of her days... “That tells me I chose the right path.”“Many of Danielle Richard’s paintings feature a vista, a clearing, a door, or a window through which a feminine gaze appears to flee, but what it truly seeks is to delve into its most intimate being.”“Beauty,” she says, “is a word more and more people are afraid of.” For so many artists who no longer dare to break the taboo, Danielle Richard has become a heroic figure. Luckily, she is there, lucid and invisible, hidden away in her studio, wrapped up in the immensity of her vision, removed from the dictates of her time. By straying from the contemporary, she remains eternal.” (Source, Régis Tremblay, Le Soleil).

www.artdaniellerichard.blogspot.com / www.daniellerichard.com


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Penny Maloney Ridley was born in 1947, a small country village in Wales. Her family immigrated to Quebec in the late fifties. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Painting and Drawing from Sir George Williams University ( Concordia ). Her early works reflected the abstract expressionists and minimalists of the sixties. Her subsequent education at the University of Toronto and Sheridan College lead her to the high realism of the seventies and conceptualism of the eighties. The work that is presented today combines this training with a strong classical drawing technique. The style may be expressed as abstract realism. Yet her work goes beyond this formal analytical classification to encompass social comment. Penny currently lives in Nova Scotia where she is enjoying her retirement from over 35 years of teaching. She is involved in promoting art awareness and in developing her reputation as a professional artist.


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Alma Kate Rumball (1902–1980) was born in Huntsville, Ontario, Canada in 1902. Alma's career began as a school teacher, but that career lasted only four years. Although she had no formal art education, artistic talent ran through both sides of Alma's family; in fact her maternal grandfather, William Morgan, was one of five runners-up in the design of what became the Eiffel Tower. When she became ill as a young woman, she was sent to a tuberculosis sanatorium for four months. She was deeply affected by the experience. She lived in Toronto for a while but after her vision during the 1950's she returned to Huntville. She became reclusive and unsociable and withdrew from life. Alma's automatic painting began in 1955, after she experienced a "vision" of Jesus, accompanied by a panther. During this event she felt commanded by Jesus to draw and write in order to help "heal humanity". From that time, her hand began to move spontaneously across pages, in swirls and detailed formations, totally unlike anything she had consciously created before. She filled up every available space on paper provided for her by her family, claiming no ownership for the work. She took no credit for the process, saying, "I'm as excited to see what 'the hand' will do as anyone else is". There was no trance state involved, she simply allowed the creations to come through her. She never claimed to understand the process, she simply marveled at the wonder of her gift. She devoted her lifetime to these drawings and writings. Her work is reminiscent of the theme of Carl Jung's Collective Unconscious as it is viewed. The famous Surrealist, Andre Breton, described the type of experience which Alma had as "pure psychic automatism". Michael Greenwood, curator of the York University Art Gallery , in Toronto where much of Alma's collection is housed said he had never seen such a case of automatism since William Blake. Many of Alma 's visionary revelations frightened Alma and she burned many of the drawings and writings. In 1963, Alma's nephew, Colin Oke, took some drawings to various Toronto galleries, but they were determined to be "too busy". By 1973, when Colin's wife, Wendy took them to the then thriving creative community on Markham Street in Toronto, the artistic climate was much more receptive to the modality of automatic drawing. Carmen Cereceda, assistant to the famous Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera, was enthralled by the works and quickly became Wendy's mentor. Carmen was able to facilitate showings of the work through the Ontario College of Art & Design where she was a professor and connected Wendy to her active spiritual community. The drawings were shown to Kalu Rinpoche, the spiritual advisor to the Dalai Lama. He identified seven out of 20 pieces as Tibetan gods and deities, rendered in the appropriate positions and with distinguishing mantels and head dresses. There was a flurry of activity during the 1970's and 80's around interpreting the icons, symbols and foreign characters. Late in her life Alma had a stroke. She continued to create drawings, but they were less complex. In 1975, she ceased creating new pieces and worked only on touching up old ones. Alma died in 1980, at 78 years of age, never really understanding the source or intent of her incredible, spontaneous gift. Her website http://www.almamatters.ca/


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Catherine Robertson was born in Canada and lives in White Rock, British Columbia. “I love to draw and have done so since a child before giving oil, and more recently, acrylic, painting some attention. Drawing satisfies an innate desire to express myself and when I see something that pleases my heart or eye, invariably a drawing results. I imagine that the contrast between dark and light (including middle tones), are part of the call to render what stimulates one. For example, if I see my black/white/grey cat lounging in dappled sunlight, there is a response to the pattern of light, and often I'll sit down and draw what I can before he moves. Often, this results in a painting.” For Catherine Robertson, drawing is an end in itself, however, it is also a wonderful tool for preparation for a painting, with or without colour. She uses the coloured pencil medium, and has been teaching it as well for some 26 years. For Catherine, it is a wonderful opportunity to draw and still be involved with colour and all the excitment it can offer. “I could summarize by saying I ‘see’, then I respond, draw, and then I paint. My drawing serves very well as a blueprint or plan for paintings. I do many, many thumbnails, often in colour, before embarking on painting. They clear my head, plan my ‘route,’ and solve most of the compositional considerations I must employ for successful picture-making.” She has been drawing since early childhood, usually nature or boats. She is not so interested in doing people and seldom ‘allows’ them into her landscapes, as she prefers them to be closer to pristine wilderness, which she loves best of all. She started teaching Coloured Pencil drawing classes in l987, and that is how she earns her living to this day. “I could not imagine life without a pencil, or brush, either in my hand or nearby, waiting to start ! Without my drawing, there would be no painting, however, if I had to, I could give up painting if allowed to forever draw.” Her website is www.robertsongallery.com and her email is: alerntwo@yahoo.ca


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Page Samis was born in 1944, in British Columbia, Canada. Page has been painting before she was 6 yrs old. She has the family background of a talented grandmother and mother. Books of Master Artists were read to her at a young age thus capturing her heart. Since 1958, she has studied with other artists and still to this day can recall what she learned. She studied art in a classical way at the Vancouver School of Art, graduating in Life Sculpture with honors in Color Theory. She also studied lost wax, lithographjy and masters in drawing at San Miguel Allende in Mexico, as well as studying drawing at the Laguna Beach School of Art in California. Further studies were completed in New York at the Pastel Society of America. She worked full time in other pursuits to support her two boys and only painted when she could. In 1990, she did her first pastel painting of the “Virgin Mary with a Bouquet of Lilies” for the West Vancouver United Church. By 2000, Page started entering juried exhibitions in pastel painting around the world. She chose this medium, because of its challenge of creating a sculpture in three dimensions with layers of color. Drawing for Page is evocative as bird-song and gives her the freedom to explore its endless joy. Queen Elizabeth II has one of her paintings. www.pagesamis.com / pagesamis@shaw.ca


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Erin Schwab was born in Morinville, Alberta, Canada. She received her Fine Art Diploma at Edmonton’s Grant MacEwan College in 2002 and later transferred to Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary where she completed her BFA in Drawing in 2004. A Graduate of the University of Alberta’s MFA Drawing program in 2006, Erin currently teaches at Keyano College in Fort McMurray. The quiet relationships of things have always captured my eye. Walking in the woods witnessing the subtle circulation between light and shadow, tension and release, growth and decay, I found myself drawn to the charismatically alien form of a mushroom against the decomposing architecture of the tree. These forms in the act of exchange, a poetic juxtaposition of death and life simultaneously pursuing their own agenda quite apart from us. How do I translate and make tangible the wonder and confusion of coming upon these transitory icons of nature? It is an experience that can’t be described with a gesture or in context. It is an experience that revels in the knurled notches of bark neighbouring the refined ripples of a fungus. The act of making is a powerful way of understanding the intangible. A drawing’s ability to be finished and in process is as fragile as this subterranean relationship between fungus and tree. And as basic as it is, I find hope in that the most unassuming and modest things can still hold mystery and contentment for us. www.erinschwab.ca


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Yevgeniya Savosta was born in 1980 in Kiev, Ukraine. From an early age she knew that fine art would be her destiny. However, due to advice given to her in early years, she took a more practical approach and graduated business University. While working in chosen field for 5 years she was taking art classes with an Architectural Drawing instructor who taught her the basics of drawing and watercolor painting. Mainly influenced by artists such as Luigi Loir and Degas, Yevgeniya was trying to find her own voice within art world of Impressionism. However, lacking solid structure in drawing and painting Yevgeniya decided to search for answers in paintings of Old Masters such as Gerrit (Gerard) Dou, Carolus-Duran, Velazquez, Sargent and William Turner. In 2003 Yevgeniya enrolled in a 5 year academic program at a well known Academy of Realist Art in Toronto that teaches drawing and painting in the old master tradition, where she had an amazing learning experience.

"In my work I look for the things that move my heart and captivate my mind: the beauty of light and certain mood it brings, how shapes and colors reveal themselves. I'm visually compelled by various forms of shape, value, pattern, texture. Through the process of painting, I gain new and deeper insight into my subject and its surroundings as these elements combine and communicate. Having gone through an amazing academic education allows me to put my thoughts on a canvas without hesitation and by asking myself "what do I want to achieve?" "How can I make it better this time" I am able to challenge myself and progress, searching for new ways of sharing my ideas."

Since her decision to paint full-time, Yevgeniya has enjoyed exhibiting her work and now constantly working on her future professional growth. Artist's works are in private collections in USA and Canada as well as in Corporate Rogers Centre Gallery, Toronto: Contact info@savart.ca and website at www.savart.ca. Tel:416-278 0962.

Exhibitions:

• 2008 Junction Arts Festival, Toronto, ON
• 2008 Galleria 814, Toronto, ON
• 2007 Junction Arts Festival, Toronto, ON
• 2006 ARA Selected works show Toronto, ON
• 2005 ARA Selected works show Toronto, ON
• 2005 ARA Selected works show Toronto, ON
• 2004 Art auction and fundraising event at Rogers Center Canada, Toronto, ON
• 2003 Realist Revival Exhibition at Earl's Court Gallery, Hamilton, ON


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Terry Shoffner has been a professional Illustrator for over 35 year and is an Associate Professor of Art at OCAD University (formerly the Ontario College of Art & Design) where he has taught since 1980. Terry was born in Newport, Arkansas in 1947, studied Fine Art at the University of Arkansas where he graduated in 1971. In 1975, he immigrated to Canada - he lives in Toronto. In 1993, he received a Master’s degree from Syracuse University. His early work included Graphic Design and television art direction. Over the past 40 years his work has appeared in magazines, books, advertising and design throughout North America, Europe and Asia. He has worked for many major corporations and won numerous awards. Over the past 14 years he has created more than 260 portraits for the Wall Street Journal in New York. More of his work can be viewed at www.terryshoffner.com


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David Silverberg was born in Montreal in 1936. By the age of seven he was already studying art under the tutelage of Group of Seven master Dr. Arthur Lismer, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts . In 1957 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University . That same year, he studied etching and engraving with William Hayter at Atelier 17 , in Paris , and was influenced by those around him including Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, and Matta.Additional studies include private studies with Alfred Pinsky; Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris; Institute des Arts Decoratifs et des Bâtiments, Grenoble, France; with further studies abroad in lithography, Japanese woodblock, batik, ceramic stoneware, glazed terra cotta, photography and mezzotint.   Silverberg soon started to develop a unique, personal style to produce beautiful engravings. Not content with a single medium any more than a single subject, Silverberg also worked in batik, ceramics, Japanese woodcut, and photography. Silverberg's interest and research into his heritage is evident in many individual engravings on Jewish themes including those featured in the folios of The Song of Songs and The Psalms of David. He has delved into stage design, creating sets for the DancEast production of Nutcracker . Silverberg's passion for art and travel is legendary. He has voyaged around the world, visiting and/or living in almost 80 countries. His critically acclaimed work has been the subject of 185 solo exhibitions in North America and abroad. In 1991 and 1992, Silverberg was invited by the Chinese government to travel, work, teach, and exhibit throughout China . In 1984, Silverberg was appointed member of the Royal Canadian Academy , and in 1986, was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts , in London , England . Thousands of students have also benefited from Silverberg's expertise. For 32 years, he shared his insights and talents with Mount Allison University faculty and students. Silverberg joined Acadia University in the fall of 1995 as Artist-in-Residence , including over sixty-five invitational public guest addresses   An internationally acclaimed artist and printmaker, Silverberg brings to his role a lifetime of creative exploration in such media as coloured engraving, etching, mezzotint, batik, Japanese wood block, ceramic sculpture, and photography .   Selected awards include Marjorie Young Bell Grants and Sabbatical Leaves, 1964, 1966, 1971-72 Canada Council Senior Arts Award, 1967 . David Silverberg is r epresented in over 25 public, government and corporate Collections and his list of solo and group exhibitions is impressive with currently 178 solo shows to date and over 100 group exhibitions, both in Canada, the United States and Internationally. Group exhibitions have been with many great contemporary artists, including Salvador Dali, Miro, Marini, Vasarely, Calder, Ben Shahn, Yoshida, Zorach, Picasso, Hayter, Braque, Zadkine, Epstein, Jacques Lipchitz;Baskin, Kollwitz, Kokaschka, and Marc Chagall . His work can be viewed at www.davidsilverberg.com.


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Brian Smith was born in 1945 in London , Ontario and raised in a family where art was considered a career, not a hobby. His mother, a respected fashion illustrator, worked daily in her home studio where both her commitment and process were clearly visible. Brian¹s ability became evident early and he was awarded a full Ontario College of Art Entrance Scholarship with advanced standings, admitting him directly into second year. Since graduating from OCA in 1969, he has been active in the graphic design industry, creating corporate identities and product branding for national and international clients. He founded the highly respected company, LOGOSBRANDS, growing it into a team of over 25 people who have won more than 85 international awards. At the same time, Smith continued to hone his skills as a classical drawer working several times a week from the model and exploring a broad range of media and styles.

Throughout his fine art career, Smith¹s principle interest has been in the human figure. Initially, his medium of choice was pastel pencil on mid tone paper. His traditional push/pull method of using sanguine and white pastel pencil on a mid tone paper pays homage to Michelangelo and Pierre Paul Prud¹hon. As Smith¹s reputation grew, he became a popular instructor in life drawing and portrait workshops throughout Southern Ontario . In 2001 he re-connected with fellow OCA graduate John Leonard and happily joined Leonard¹s infamous Wednesday Group in Toronto , growing both the formal and conceptual aspects of his art. It was also during this period that Smith began to explore a new style in his work, using charcoal pencil and black and white gesso on the familiar mid tone paper.

The desire to combine his bred in the bone graphic design training with his classical drawing skills resulted in a series of rich, high-contrast works that have won acclaim in many invitational and juried exhibitions, as well as becoming a preferred style for many of his commissioned portraits. By early 2002 his work showed his growing attraction towards more dynamic portraits in both acrylics and oils. Smith¹s works in this period took on a warmth and exuberance that won him the Award of Excellence in the Etobicoke Annual Juried Exhibition. In 2002 Smith became an instructor at Haliburton School of The Arts teaching both beginner and advanced portrait courses as well as a member of the faculty of the Ontario College of Art and Design. Most recently he has begun teaching at the Koffler Centre (Bathurst Jewish Community Centre) in Toronto as an instructor in both Portraiture and Life Drawing. Smith is also available in his own studio for one-on-one and small group private drawing work shops working from the figure. "I have loved the human form since I first began to draw" says Smith. "For me, each piece is about capturing those absolutely perfect curves and extraordinary shapes that we all have, the forms that will reveal the beauty and dignity that I see in the model." www.drawn2life.com / briansmith@drawn2life.com


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Deborah Strong has been an artist since she could first hold a pencil. With formal training in fine arts and in graphic communication, this British Columbia artist worked as a professional graphic designer for many years before devoting herself full-time to fine art. Deborah views herself as a citizen of the world who values the diverse creatures that inhabit the planet and who advocates responsible stewardship of the Earth. The animal world is the focus of Deborah’s attention, both as an artist and as an individual. Her work ranges from portraits of companion animals to depictions of wild creatures in their natural habitats. Her own collection of four-legged friends often features in her art, and sightings of wild birds and animals—both in her home region and abroad—offer Deborah ongoing and often unexpected inspiration. Her art speaks from her heart and from her own experiences. There is a personal story and an emotional investment every piece of art she makes. Drawing is fundamental to Deborah's art practice. She works in two distinctly diverse art media: coloured pencil and hand-painted silk, and although the contrast between them is significant, there is harmony in their diversity. Her coloured pencil drawings emphasize fine detail, control and enormous patience, while the essence of her silk paintings lies in simplified forms and vibrant, flowing colour. However different these media may be, both involve strict attention to detail and a methodical approach to the application of the materials. Despite the decades Deborah has devoted to these media, every day she finds fresh opportunities to investigate new forms, try new techniques, and test the technical boundaries of her materials, thus ensuring her work remains fresh and lively, and invested with a sense of wonder and discovery. Deborah currently resides in Langley, British Columbia with her husband and their collection of animal companions. She works out of her home studio, Cat & Mouse Designs. www.catnmousedesigns.com


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Elaine Silverman Sturm was born in 1949, and lives in Toronto, Ontario, but is originally from Montreal, Quebec. Her talent and insight for seeing things in a slightly different way than most grew out of her family's support for her to draw what she felt or what she saw at a very early age.  A little muralist in the making, her need to draw was so strong that the walls were her canvas, until her parents encouraged her to use the paper and pencils they got for her instead.  Her talent is natural and her love for art pushed her to direct and enhance her skills on her own, finding her niche in portrait drawing and interesting scenes which almost always include people.  Contemporary situations and everyday happenings are just simple fodder to be made into timeless moments by expressing them through her artist's eye.  She especially delights in drawing children because their sheer innocence and animation always tells an honest story.  As an observer of people, Elaine finds that each person she encounters possesses an endless source of unique characteristics and interest from which to find beauty. Besides portraying the evident facial features, she delves beneath the surface to connect with and include the spirit.  Her motivation is inspired by the narrative of what a person is doing, which can look magical to the eye of the beholder, when recreated in paint or charcoal. Her media of choice in drawing materials ranges from graphite to coloured pencil and charcoal, while for painting, her materials are soft pastels and oils. Her style is realism. Although she enjoys the spontaneity and instant pleasure of working from life whenever possible, photography is also an avid interest of hers and you can often catch her snapping pictures of interesting locations and people she finds fascinating for future art projects, from as far away as the canals in Amsterdam to the market places and cafe scenes in Toronto.  For Elaine, there is a story in every picture and a painting from which to showcase it. A self-taught artist, Elaine pursued her love for art by going to local workshops as a young adult, knowing she always had an artist's soul inside her just waiting to emerge. She has been able to apply techniques she acquired in part from her extensive library of art books, acquired at many famous museums around the world, plus she has also gratefully listened to the constructive advice from fellow artists she has met in her journey along her path. Elaine's work has been showcased in many different kinds of venues, having started with displays at coffee shops and advancing.  She has been an active participant in The Annual Thyroid Foundation Art Show in Montreal for the last eight years and has donated several pieces for auction and charity. Her oil painting of the renowned and respected author, and Dean of the Law School of York University, Toronto, Peter Hogg, was painted upon his retirement and now hangs in Osgoode Hall at the University. Through word of mouth, contacts from her art shows, and time spent in Florida each year, she has been commissioned to do many family portraits.  With the technology of computers, the client is able to see the progress of each painting before its completion.  Even when photographs are the only visual she has to work from, she still manages to bring out the essence of the person. The portraits and figure paintings of people she has made over the years, both living and posthumously, are in many collections and homes.  She is presently a current member of the Forest Hill Art Club and has been a member of the Pastel Society of Eastern Canada (PSEC), accepted into their prestigious juried Art Exhibit at Ogilvy's, in Montreal. "Talent is a gift from God. He gives us the passion and we honour Him by working hard and passing on the gift through our art."  Elaine feels that if she can be responsible for a little happiness to flow into someone's life by way of her paintings, then she has used her gift wisely and graciously. Elaine Silverman Sturm's work can be viewed at www.elainesturmfineart.com/. She also can be contacted at: info@elainesturmfineart.com


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Donna Surprenant was born in Massachusetts , USA in 1953. Since she first began painting over thirty years ago, nature and art impelled her to live with brush in hand. Her love for the great masters of light throughout the centuries has drawn her to museums across the country and Europe , and over the years she has participated in numerous workshops to further develop her skills of perceptual paintings. In 1981, she moved to Canada to become a member in Madonna House, a Catholic community of men and women where she resides as a full-time painter. This rich experience of reflection and activity gives her a unique environment within which to paint. The motifs for still life come from an awareness of the beauty and silence offered in an ordered arrangement of humble objects. Gathered from the community's kitchen or garden, they reveal an intimate world of place and presence. She discovers in the process of painting their complexity of colour and texture, their light and form, a visual poetry which teaches her how to see with greater clarity and quiet joy. She has exhibited in numerous shows throughout Ontario , and beyond including New York , other galleries in the USA , and Italy . She is a member of the Portrait Society of America .

"Painting is for me," says Donna Surprenant, " a response to the experience of light and color, and to the beauty I see in nature and in art. It is the search to know, to discover this visual and interior beauty through the act of painting a human face, a simple bowl, or a landscape. Living within Madonna House for the past twenty years, this response has come to encompass our communal life, our daily work and liturgical prayer, offering to me, and thus to the painting, a reflection on the inner harmony and tension of reality."

Madonna House is a public association of the faithful within the Roman Catholic Church, founded in 1947, under the bishop of the diocese of Pembroke , Ontario .  This family of Catholic laymen, women and priests strives to incarnate the teachings of Jesus Christ, by forming a community of love.  Madonna House serves many areas throughout the world in both the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  At the main center in Combermere , ON , they receive guests into their communal and liturgical life, offer summer family retreats, and spread the Gospel through numerous publications. Donna Surprenant's work can be viewed at www.madonnahouse.org/tour/surprenant.


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Gerald Squires, C.M., D.Litt., R.C.A. was born in Change Island , Newfoundland on November 17,1937 . Both parents were Salvation Army Officers. During the war his father served overseas in the Forestry, and his mother, who had been a missionary in India and China for several years before marrying, held the main responsibility of raising three sons while ministering in various communities in Newfoundland . When Gerald was 12, his mother was stationed out of Newfoundland to Toronto . As he was always drawing and painting, his artistic interest and abilities were recognized by friends and teachers who encouraged him to take the commercial art course offered at Danforth Technical High School, where he would learn skills that would allow him to make a living as a commercial artist working in the advertising field. But as luck would have it, two of his art instructors, Dan Logan, and Fred Savard, were fine artists , and through them he discovered and was encouraged to pursue his true calling of personal self-expression though art. He went on weekend painting trips to Algonquin Park ; painted and sketched daily in the backstreets and pubs of Toronto ; went regularly to life-drawing at the Artist's Workshop , and attended night classes taught by John Alfsen, Fred Hagan, and Jack Nichols, at the Ontario College of Art & Design . Upon graduation from Danforth Tech he rented a studio, supporting himself and his art by working as a stained glass artist with McCausland's Stained Glass Studios in Toronto , and Russell C. Goodman Stained Glass in West Hill. He apprenticed for 6 months with sculptor/printmaker Carl Pappe in Tasco , Mexico , and then worked for several years as an editorial artist with The Toronto Telegram Newspaper. His works of art have been included in many group exhibitions in galleries across Canada , one of which won him The Saidye & Samuel Bronfman Best Young Artist Award, and is in the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Art. Among his many early Toronto solo exhibitions were: "St. Francis of Assisi and Related Subjects" ( Helene Arthur Gallery ), "The Canticles of St. John of the Cross" ( Mazelow Gallery ), and "The Wanderer Series" ( Picture Loan Gallery ). He was among a small group of artists who initiated Toronto 's first Outdoor Art Exhibition and was a founding member of the Robert McLaughlin Art Gallery , Oshawa , Ontario .

In 1969, Squires, now married, quit his job at The Telegram and returned to Newfoundland with his wife Gail, and daughters Meranda and Esther, settling in 1971 at the lighthouse residence in Ferryland. Here, hired for two years as "Artist in Residence" by Memorial University Extension, he taught art, and together with fellow-artist Stewart Montgomerie, set up a steel sculpture studio (Headland Studios), where he and local artists created everything from steel anchors for fishermen, to exhibition and public and private sculpture commissions. Paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures produced by Squires, and exhibited in galleries in Newfoundland and across Canada during these 12 years were: "The Boatman", "Studies in Steel", "Portraits", "The Ferryland Downs Series", and the "Cassandra Series," to name some.

Moving to Holyrood , Newfoundland in 1983, Squires worked for three years on commissions from Mary Queen of the World Parish creating two large triptychs, "Crucifixion and Resurrection", "The Last Supper", and "The Fourteen Stations of the Cross". An Arnold Bennett film, "The Newfoundland Passion" shown often on Vision TV, traces the creation of these works. Solo Exhibitions from 1983 to 1998 include: "New Works by Gerry Squires" at the Emma Butler Gallery, St. John's, 1989; "Gerald Squires: The Newfoundland Landscape 1988-1993" at the Art Gallery, Memorial University of Newfoundland; "Gerald Squires: New Landscapes" (a Year of the Arts' Exhibition) at the RCA Gallery, St. John's, NL, 1997; Gerald Squires: Journey" (a retrospective showing selections from 4 decades of work) at the "Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1998; "Gerald Squires: Continuing Journey" at the David Ariss Fine Art Gallery, St. John's, NL, 1998

Artist, art activist and teacher, much of Squires' large body of work finds its inspiration in the landscape and culture of Newfoundland . In 1984, Squires received the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council's Ted Drover Award for Achievement in the Visual Arts. In 1992, he received an Honourary Doctorate from Memorial University ; and in 1999, he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Art. In September 1999, he was appointed Member of the Order of Canada , and in 2003 received the Golden Jubilee Award from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. He has acted as a juror for Canada Council Arts Grants "B" and for the Newfoundland & Labrador Arts Council. Many of his major exhibitions have traveled across Canada and his works have been included in more than 300 group exhibitions in Newfoundland, Canada, U.S.A., Great Britain, France and India, including: "Political Landscapes #1" at the Royal Canadian Academy Gallery, Toronto and the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, Owen Sound, ON, 1989; "9 Peintres Terre Neuviens" at the Salle de la Renaissance, Bordeaux, France, 1992; "Hidden Values: Atlantic Corporations Collect", Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 1997.

Commissions and other work since 2001 include: a life-size bronze statue of a Shanawdithit ("Spirit of the Beothuk") for The Beothuk Institute of Newfoundland and Labrador erected at the Boyd's Cove Newfoundland Beothuk Interpretation Centre; "Caribou on the Barrens", a 5 X10 foot oil painting for the St. John's Airport commissioned by the St. John's Airport Authority; designing and painting the "Brother Jim McSheffery Memorial Window" for the MacMorran Community Centre, St. John's and "Fourteen Stained Glass Windows" for Mary Queen of the World Parish Church, Mount Pearl - both produced through Brendan Blackmore's Sunhound Glassworks Ltd.; "Avondale's Disappearing Church", a limited edition of 50 lithographs; Canadian Catholic missionary martyrs, "Breubeuf and His Brethren", 8 ceramic raku-fired wall-relief sculptures for St. Bonaventure School Chapel, St. John's; "St. George's Anglican Church, Brigus", an edition of 100 lithographs for the Brigus Heritage Committee; Recently installed in the St. Clare's Hospital entrance hallway is, "For Mercy Has a Human Heart", an 8 X 18 foot raku-fired bas-relief ceramic wall mural depicting the history of the hospital, commissioned by The Sisters of Mercy designed by Squires and sculpted and fired with the assistance of his daughter Esther Squires.

In June 2004, Gerald's life in art were a featured event of the 2 nd Annual St. Jerome's Festival of Art and Spirit in Waterloo, Ontario, where he gave a slide show and talk and several of his major works were exhibited at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery.

Squires is presently working on paintings and drawings for an exhibition of new works at the Emma Butler Gallery coming up in November 2005, and a ceramic wall mural and limited edition of 100 lithographs of Bishop Lampert commissioned by The St. John's Basilica. In Newfoundland Gerald's works can be seen at The Gerald Squires' Gallery of Fine Art, 52 Prescott St., St. John's, Wed. through Sun., 1 p.m. - 6 p.m. (other times by chance or appointment) Telephone 579-3814 or 229-7578; The Red Ochre Gallery, 91 Duckworth St., St. John's. The Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador has a large collection of his work, many of which can be seen at The Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador (The Rooms), and in public buildings and offices owned by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador . Artworks at Mary Queen of the World Church can be viewed a half hour before and after services. "Caribou on the Barrens" can be found in the carousel area of the St. John's Airport . The sculpture, "Spirit of the Beothuk" is on the path leading to the Beothuk site at the Boyd's Cove Interpretation Centre; "For Mercy Has a Human Heart" is in the main entrance hallway of St. Clare's Hospital. He also has works at the Fog Forest Gallery in Sackville, N.B.

You can find many of his works online at The Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador website: www.mun.ca/agnl . Squires' website www.gerrysquires.com will soon be ready for viewing. To find more information and reproductions of his works on the internet, type in Gerry Squires on the Google search engine.


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Michael Thompson was born in Montreal in 1954. From 1973 to 1976, he obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Concordia University in Montreal, and from 1976 to 1978, he was enrolled in the graduate program in Fine Arts at Concordia University as well. Michael Thompson is an artist with an intense artistic vision, a vision that ever since he became a professional artist in 1976, has found expression in paintings and drawings which have gained him much critical acclaim and recognition for their compelling imagery, meticulous technique, and stunning naturalism. Recognition also resulted in a series of grants and awards that enabled Michael Thompson to continue his remarkable journey in fine arts, including Ontario Arts Council grants, Greenshields Foundation grants, and awards from the Chancellor’s Associates Society of Memorial University in Newfoundland. Michael Thompson aims to provoke a specific response in viewers, a response that makes vievers feel like they are “falling into the picture,” past the minutely observed surfaces, towards an underlying reality, poised at the intersect between experience and memory, a place where the emotional essence of the painting or drawing’s subject is revealed. Often the result is a dreamlike quality, a synthesis of psychological, spiritual and visual perceptions, heightened by a remarkable clarity and focus. From 1978 to the present, his work has been featured in galleries from New York to Toronto, Hamilton, Oakville and Kitchener, and from Montreal and Sherbrooke to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Drawing has always been a significant component of Michael Thompson’s work, and is crucially important to understanding both his process and his creative intentions. In addition to the brilliance of his technical skill, his drawings offer a direct glimpse into how the artist thinks and feels. His drawings are the arena in which the central themes of Michael’s work are carefully worked out. They also hint at the process by which he transforms material reality into a highly personal vehicle of expression. Michael Thompson has been selected for a number of publications about art by newspapers, galleries, and such publishers as Hurtig Publishing Ltd. in Toronto, Moos Publishing Ltd. In New York and Toronto, in addition to which he is listed in the “Dictionary of International Biography,” of Cambridge, England, and “The Canadian Who’s Who,” published by University of Toronto Press. Michael Thompson’s work continues to express the essential duality which underlies all his art, namely the pervasive sense that each subject, no matter how completely described, possesses a narrative which ultimately remains ambiguous. In this delicate balance between shadows and light, meaning becomes elusive, a tension between outward appearance and hidden potentialities. “Things are not always what they seem in Michael Thompson’s works,” said one newspaper columnist, “as slippery surfaces defy description, shadows slide by revealing, hidden meanings and enigmatic encounters.” His images include still lifes, portraits, genre scenes, and even architectural structures. Many of his drawings are figurative, nuanced portraits of friends and acquaintances, all with a narrative edge and usually with symbolic undercurrents. On a personal note, the artist says, “my work is very time consuming with each drawing taking about a month and paintings even longer.” The most difficult part he claims is to maintain and sustain that initial spark as he goes back to the image to work it over and over again, hoping all the while there remains some recognition of the elements that caused the scene to resonate for him when he first conceived it. Michael Thompson lives and works in Oakville, Ontario, and is represented by Nicholas Metivier Gallery in Toronto. His personal webpage is: www.michaelthompson.ca.


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Gerrit V.L.Verstraete was born in 1945. He has been a professional artist for over 35 years. He began his fine art studies as a child in the Netherlands , his country of birth. At age five, he was introduced to formal art lessons by renowned Dutch artist, Stien Eelsingh (1903 - 1964), co-founder of the arts group Het Palet at the Hopmanshuis in the medieval city of Zwolle . In 1958 the Verstraete family moved to Canada . After completing highschool in 1964 he enrolled at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto . He graduated with honours in 1968 and is an Associate of the Ontario College of Art & Design ( AOCA ) . The journey, however, took an unusual course for the young artist. Instead of pursuing fine arts full time, he founded and owned a design studio that soon grew into a nationally accredited advertising agency. For 15 years, and with a staff of 26 in Toronto and Ottawa , his creativity appeared in print, on billboard, radio, television, in corporate design and "business theatre" . His work included many creative projects in the world of performing arts with some of Canada 's leading dance and theatre companies. Married and with a growing family that would soon count six children, he continued to attend evening drawing sessions at the college to keep his skills sharp and work fresh. In 1982, he founded the Christian Communications Centre whose work included teaching, conference management and publishing. In 1993, he moved his family to Gabriola Island , British Columbia . There he built a large family home including a spaceous studio. In addition to his passion for fine art, he is author of numerous spiritual teachings, a newspaper columnist, poet, counselor and mentor. Today he spends full time drawing in his Masterpeace Fine Art Studio. His work covers a broad specrum of styles from realism to expressionism, to abstract and minimalism, as well as mastery of silverpoint drawing. He is a former board member and president of Festival Gabriola and the Gabriola Community Arts Council , and former Executive Director of the Chemainus Theatre on Vancouver Island . Gerrit Verstraete is the founder of the Drawing Society of Canada and its online " Gallery of Canadian Drawing Masters ," as well as the Canadian Academy of Drawing . In 2001, he completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree ( BFA ) from the British Columbia Open University. He is a consulting member and distance studies faculty of the European Academy for Culture and Arts in the Netherlands. A selection of his work can be seen at www.gverstraete.com and in his new online gallery www.masterpeacegallery.com. He can be reached at gverstraete@shaw.ca


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Christopher Walker was born in Montreal , Quebec . As a child, his oil paintings depicting Quebec rural landscape gave birth to his love and dedication towards art and the environment. His formal artistic education was at the Ontario College of Art from 1983 to 1987 where he began experimenting in different media and compositional development. Having a long list of scientific interests, Walker developed the ability to blend his artistic distinction with his respect for scientific accuracy. He has worked as an art director of illustrated science books and has illustrated four to his credit. Walker has also been commissioned by museums and was art director for the Swan Lake Christmas Hill Nature Sanctuary in Victoria , B.C. His departure from expository illustration gave Walker boundless freedom to face new challenges in his work. His unique themes and powerful compositions developed into a higher standard of research. Walker 's paintings can only be conceived from the actual experience of the subject.

Walker has been represented by some of North America 's most prestigious galleries such as Winchester Galleries , Victoria , B.C., Simon Patriche Galleries, Vancouver , B.C. as well as Birchwood Gallery, Yellowknife , N.T., Peninsula Gallery, Sidney , B.C. and the Burdette Gallery, Orton , Ontario .

On August 22, 1994 , the C.C.G.S. Louis S. St. Laurent and the U.S.C.G.S. Polar Sea icebreakers entered history as the first North American surface vessels to reach the North Pole. Walker is now in the Canadian Archives as ship's artist. His work depicting this expedition has been featured on the A&E Network and his originals have travelled across Canada. The work has been seen at The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria , B.C., The Vancouver Maritime Museum, B.C., The Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa , The Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History, Halifax , and the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, N.T., and the Freshwater Institute, Winnipeg .

Walker 's influences range from Vermeer Van Delft, J.A.D. Ingres, Casper David Friedrich to Alex Colville, Andrew Wyeth, Robert Bateman and George Mcclean. A traditional approach along with a distinctive, contemporary style stemming from his unique yet poetic observations of the human condition and the environment make Walker 's art a unique and progressive format of realism. His paintings can be found in international, private and corporate collections including England , Germany , New Zealand , Japan , Norway and the United States . He has also been commissioned by the National Science Foundation, Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Environment Canada. Walker continues his conceptual development at his studio on Vancouver Island , British Columbia . His work can be viewed online at www.christopherwalkerart.ca.


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Stephen Bruce Warren ( 1957 - 1988 ) was born in Sudbury, Ontario on August 27, 1957. Later he moved to Toronto, but in the early nineteen-seventies made Campbellville his home. In 1979 he began studies at the Ontario College of Art & Design, where he learned to develop his personal manner in his painstaking art. Stephen Warren was a miniaturist, but despite a physical handicap that confined Stephen to a wheelchair, a handicap that restricted the sizes in which he could work, his creativity knew no bounds. His created miniature oil paintings, pencil drawings, and monograms. He also became an avid fan of computer-art software allowing him the joys of artistic experimentation. In 1982 he established the Kingdom Art Corporation, as a way to facilitate his creativity in an artform that gave full expression to his personal faith. Three years later he opened the Kingdom Art Gallery in Milton as a showcase for his drawings and paintings. Even though he loved the action of the big city, he made his home at Bezek Centre, a spiritual retreat centre founded by his father Rev. Bernard Warren, just west of Toronto. "Stephen," said his father, "was always the entrepreneur who kept life interesting for everyone." Gerrit Verstraete, founder of the Drawing Society of Canada knew Stephen very well and spent time with him on the back steps of his small studio at Bezek Centre. Together they would draw and paint the "view from the porch" and dream about great exploits in art. Stephen's works have been exhibited in Milton, Campbellville, Burlington, Waterdown, Dundas, and Sudbury. In Toronto he exhibited at the Wychwood Public Library, the Gallery Alpha, the Great Comeback Gallery, Gallery Ingenue, Toronto's City Hall and the O'Keefe Centre. In Ottawa, his works have been exhibited in the Parliament Buildings. Stephen died at the age of thirty-one, two days after Christmas 1988. Stephen Warren, although bound by a wheelchair all his life, lived to the full and chose to reflect that fullness in the miniature works he created.

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