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An Urquhart Sampler
Tony Urquhart "Still Life"
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"There is one box, called Still Life, you can walk all the way around it; in the middle it has two little Plexiglas wings and each wing has a feather affect, in other words the Plexiglas is worked on each side. I have placed that particular box between two of the most recent things from 2008. Each one has a kind of flower, somewhat abstract, and they reference very closely each wing of the box." |
Tony Urquhart has spent over 40 years creating these wonderful box sculptures. They are among many defining moment in a celebrated career.
Realizing the significant last year, Tony decided to do something to celebrate, as he explained, "I thought there are about 24 or 25 galleries in Canada that do own an opening box sculpture. I decided to write them and ask them to put it up beside there admission desk or in a hallway or somewhere for the month of November. I hand wrote letters to each of these galleries." The idea took on a life of it's own. Tony continues, "I mentioned this idea to Joyce Zemans [Director, Arts and Media Administration Program] Chair at York University. She suggested doing a virtual catalog. I hadn't really about it I'm still email-challenged though I do now have a website. The other player in this was Bill Kirby, who said 'I will do the catalogue for you' and Joyce wrote the introduction. Bill looked after getting three or four images from every box, you couldn't have one picture and a couple of interviews, and he put it all together. I assume now most of the galleries have taken the box down, but the catalog is still on the web. Bill is a great guy, and he really did a good job."
Title: Bouquet on Red, 2007
Artist: Tony Urquhart (Canadian b. 1934)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 26 x 34 in.
Image Courtesy: Thielsen Gallery
Do not overlook Tony's wonderful paintings such as Bouquet on Red. Talking about this canvas piece Tony said, "Bouquet on Red, is probably the most straight forward of all of the still lifes. It's a bunch of flowers that are made of bits of collage with underpainting and overpainting and all kinds of stuff, so even if you walked up to the painting, which is 2 x 3 feet it's not huge, you could not find one real recognizable flower in the whole thing, it's really manipulation of paint. Certainly as you can see in the image, it's a bouquet. I had fun with it. Painting most of the time, I'd say almost all the time, it starts with an idea and then you start working on it and the idea changes."
For Tony, "the best quote is Mike Snow, who said 'he sets up rules, and he follows them and if he finds he's losing, he changes the rules.' This is the sort of thing that actually happened to me, it's very true. I don't think anybody can set up rules, follow them and get a really terrific painting, half of the fun is finding it in the chase. It's the journey that's more fun and more difficult too, because 9 times out of 10 nothing happens or nothing that you want to happen happens. It's only the tenth time that it comes off and unlike stage actors and concert pianists, if it doesn't work you do it again and again and finally it does work."
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This interview took place shortly after Tony had hung this show at Thielsen Gallery. He said, "I like hanging shows because my first paid job was as Artist-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario, in 1960. I was also the curator of the McIntosh Gallery, I wasn't titled curator, there wasn't anyone else there. I had to do 10 or 12 shows a year. I had to think up the shows, phone the artists, get the paintings, hang them and have the opening. I quite enjoyed putting shows together and consequently I like hanging my own shows. They're about the only ones I get to do nowadays." |
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"I had a diagram that I brought in to show where all of the major pieces should go. The larger oils and the boxes I'd figured out where they would look good. I know the gallery, I've been there lots of times and I have an ides of the paintings that I would like to feature and also I think if a show is well installed the pieces speak to each other. By that I mean that there may be a shape in one piece that is echoed in another or a color or texture that is echoed in another work."
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"Today there were things talking back and forth across the room, that I had figured probably they would and then every once in a while you see something that you didn't really think about and you say that was a lucky choice or you say this one might be better if I moved it. It's almost like it's a game of chess. Your moves are finite but there can be an awful lot of them." |
Title: Cottage Chair, 2006
Artist: Tony Urquhart (Canadian b. 1934)
Medium: Mixed Media Drawing
Dimensions: 4 3/4 x 4 1/4 in.
Image Courtesy: Thielsen Gallery
Tony Urquhart once wrote of the 'after image' of the works of art he most admired. It's true, the works that touch us in some way, stay with us. It's a quality that is true of his artistic accomplishments.
Tony Urquhart "Still Life"
Thielsen Gallery:
March 28 - April 19, 2008