Chris Sears Photographer

"Question" - Chris Sears Photo/ Roncey Dogs

 As I've mentioned many times in my posts I love to learn about artists that I've never heard of, or who's  work I'm unfamiliar with, whether living or dead. This artist is very much alive and full disclosure, Chris Sears is a life long friend. We've known each other since our early awkward adolescence when we were hangin' out in the " Blue Room " at the old hole in the wall Y.M.C.A., in our home town Amherst, Nova Scotia.

That said, Chris and I both studied art, but I never saw a whole lot of his work until recently over the past few years. I'm really excited to know he'd been busily taking photographs all this while, creatively viewing the world through the lens of his camera.

Henri Cartier-Bresson once described photography as "a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture your eye must see, a composition or an expression that life itself offers you and must know with intuition when to click the camera . That is the moment the photographer is creative " he said Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it it is gone forever.".

Like Bresson Chris Sears photography through his own intuition, captures the significance, in that split second immediate reaction to what he sees, documenting the supposed inconsequential events of life into beautiful subject matter and transforms the tiny details of human life into what Bresson called "Leitmotiv".

Chris photographs cats, as he is like me is a great cat lover, as was Henri Cartier-Bresson who took wonderful photos of cats.

I've an real affinity and love for Toronto Ontario because I lived in the East End growing up and it's where I met the love of my life.
 Chris has been living in the big T.O for many years now. His street photographs of the city, make me very nostalgic and I especially love his dog portraits of Roncey Dogs because it's my old neighbourhood on Roncenvalles in High Park and I love dogs.

And so, I am absolutely delighted to be able to share with you this link to Chris Sears photography site.

Alex Colville's Family Gift

Alex Colville's daughter, Ann Kitz, in front of the restored mural called Athletes, in the Colville Gallery in Owens Art Gallery. (Owens Art Gallery)

Alex Colville is an artist I've long admired. This morning I heard that his studio is about to be recreated and displayed on site in the Colville House on the Mount Allison University campus, thanks to the generous gift from his family. I was very excited to hear this news.

This CBC article describes all the details, and the permanent exhibit will be on display July 2017. I can hardly wait to visit Alex Colville's studio space!

Alex Colville, in his Sackville home in 1961. (Owens Art Gallery)

“I do have a fear of chaos and a strong sense of the fragility of civilization.” - Alex Colville

In one of my recent Canadian Art History classes, we were covering the work of Alex Colville, and we were asked if we liked his work. One of the class members was very emphatic that they did not like his work stating it was even rather misogynistic and another adjective that was very critical that has escaped my memory right now. I will have to refer to my Professor and ask her, and update this blog entry in order to address the criticism. I expressed that I loved his work as a matter of fact I greatly admire it and am thrilled to know that he once studied at Mount Allison and taught painting. It makes me wish I had known him I would love to have been a student of his.

I may be mistaken but I think some subjectively and reactionarily judge artists like Alex Colville based on misconception or misunderstanding or simply because they don't think the tradition of what has gone before within the art world is important to their own practice.

I am very interested in egg tempera, which is the medium Alex Colville often worked with to produce his paintings. I remember the first time I actually saw one of his paintings, Seven Crows, at the Owens Gallery. I was awe stuck, because it was a scene very Maritime to me, where I live, in the place I love . I felt it was almost a spiritual experience. Perhaps this was the magical realism I was experiencing, the term that is often used to describe Colville quality of style. There is a timelessness and atmospheric essence in this painting, and in others I have seen, simultaneously one is acutely aware that time and life pass. All the more reason to savor the present moment and to be live life in a mindful way.

Egg Tempera - a slow process - Alex Colville Transcript
I wanted to be able to work for a long time on one image, that I couldn’t achieve the kind of thing I hoped to achieve in a short time. This is a kind of limitation in the …you know a great Chinese painter of the great period does something and it’s done, it may be done in a matter of minutes actually and it may, he may do, you know, thirty of them and one of them seems perfect. It’s a kind of gestural thing, it’s more in a sense like dancing or something in a way. My stuff, it’s a much more plodding procedure. Incidentally I should just mention extremely boring to watch, you know, that is a person would be just bored to death if they could watch me work. Far from it being interesting or exciting as some people think.