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okay hi everyone um i’d like to welcome you tonight

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my name is shawna mccabe and i’m the director of the art gallery of guelph um who is hosting this event tonight

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um i’m very pleased to be speaking with charles pactor and to be having this conversation tonight uh two days after indigenous

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veterans day and on the eve of remembrance day a day we acknowledge the courage and sacrifice of all those who have served

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and continue to serve and to acknowledge our responsibility to work for the peace they have fought hard

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to achieve before we start um this evening i just would like to

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remind everyone that we we have everyone’s video off as well as audio and to avoid any

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potential noise and if you do have questions and we would welcome lots of questions um plea please use the q a the question

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and answer section that’s available on your screen and we will address them a little later

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in the conversation i’d like to welcome you all and to offer a land acknowledgement to

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start this statement is critical for cultural institutions as it recognizes the history and ongoing impacts of

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colonialism as well as the historical complicity of heritage institutions through their approaches to the

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representation of difference images and narratives that take on an authority in the public sphere

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typically atlantic knowledge acknowled recognizes the traditional ownership of the lands upon which an event is held

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and tonight as we’re gathered over distance virtually connected and yet physically dispersed

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uh it is a good moment to reflect on the significance of place wherever we are and how the different traditional lands

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that we reside in and move through inform our lives we respect the significance of treaties

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that continue to affirm the inherent sovereignty of indigenous nations and recognize a responsibility for the

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stewardship of the lands on which we live work and create

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it seemed important to have this conversation today and in conjunction with our current

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exhibition of paintings by charles pachter called lest we forget marking a century

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since the first world war charles was approached by the office of the lieutenant governor of ontario to

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create a series of paintings about the war to ammo wars and its legacy for canadians

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six of these large-scale works are on view currently at the art gallery of guelph which were donated generously by charles

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pachter to the gallery at the end of 2019 and we’re very pleased to be able to

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share the works with the public so quickly um and i’ll just show you a few images

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this is as you walk into the gallery

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and this is the full space um i also want to say a little bit about

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charles pachter he is a painter a printmaker sculptor designer historian and lecturer and is one of the

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most collected and cherished canadian artists he studied french literature at the sorbonne

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art history at the university of toronto and painting and graphics at the cranbook cranbrook academy of art in bloomfield

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hills michigan his work has been shown at the art gallery of ontario the royal ontario museum the mcmichael canadian art

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collection as well as many other venues his iconic and patriotic images that have

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have also independently earned their place in national museums as well as those internationally uh he’s

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represented in public and private collections throughout canada and internationally his work has also been featured in solo exhibitions in france

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germany japan the uk india and bangladesh

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um i wanted to start too by just giving a sense of his wider practice um uh charles patrick charles you’ve

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been painting for for several decades at this point and um and really you know i was telling

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charles before we started that there’s sort of a kind of a really compelling arc to his work um he’s well known

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for his playful approach to representation of figures and landscapes associated

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with canada uh he’s actually spent you spent most of your creative life capturing this kind of um iconography

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that is is uh very much about canada and um and speaks to canadian experience

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the queen often appears in your work um as well the painted flag this is from

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1981 and what’s interesting is if you look at charles charles’s work you see these

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images recur in different contexts and different ways over time this is moose crossing

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very familiar to us baywatch

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canadian tire which is actually in the ima you’re in behind you in your in your home there

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the campus house

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red barnet oro

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now while um you know you’ve been creating this visual mythology out of canadian history and culture

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with often very playful approach um the series less we forget is is much

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more contemplative contemplative i would say and i’m wondering um just with this image maybe could you

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talk about how the project came about um yes i think the easiest thing would

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be for me to uh read from a very short essay that i wrote in the original catalog

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for the exhibition that opened at queen’s park in 2014 a hundred years after the start of the

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war and here’s what i wrote

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where have all the soldiers gone gone to graveyards everyone oh when will they ever learn when will

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they ever learn that’s pete seeger’s song where have all the flowers gone

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recently i created a series of paintings examining the war of 1812 between the young united states and

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britain’s north american colonies that resulted in the birth of a new canadian identity

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a century later came the first world war and a century after that i was

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approached by the office of the lieutenant governor of ontario to consider painting a series about this

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war to end all wars that defined our emerging colonial nation

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with even more profound and tragic consequences

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if this was canada’s coming of age its profound rite of passage i needed to know why fighting for the

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british empire was seen to be such an act of courage and loyalty why young men from across the vast

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reaches of our sparsely populated country of just eight million people

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left for the battlefields of germany france and belgium to be wounded slaughtered and if they

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survived traumatized for life for months i poured over letters written by young

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soldiers from the trenches diaries of courageous nurses and dour

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military reports of the appalling number of casualties among canada’s young

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soldiers my thoughts turned to a painting i remembered from childhood by group of seven war artists

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frederick barley titled for what which depicts

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the grisly pile of mutilated corpses in a cart sitting in a filthy quagmire

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awaiting hasty burial the more i read the more i pondered war as the low point

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of human existence how different were we are we from the apes

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how have we evolved if at all is killing for territory and dominance

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an inevitable characteristic of human behavior after much sifting of ideas i chose not

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to depict the violence and savagery of the battlefields the exploding shells the gunfire the

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rotting corpses and the agony of the wounded and dying instead i chose a path of meditation on

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war as metaphor wordsworth’s phrase emotion recollected

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in tranquility often came to my mind a hundred years later

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could i evoke this war as a metaphor for human frailty could i transform misery and suffering

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into something powerful poetic and metaphysical an excerpt from

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john mcrae’s celebrated poem in flanders fields kick-started my subconscious

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we are the dead short days ago we lived fell dawn saw sunset glow

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loved and were loved and now we lie in flanders fields

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my challenge was to get up close and personal with the warrior to put myself in his boots to get my

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head inside his brain to feel what one lone soldier felt confronting his

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rage his fear his mortality and i wondered also how the stoic nurses

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the healers survived deprivation discomfort shock how they must have

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needed and clung to each other for friendship and moral support

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i tried to imagine myself in the position of a half-naked soldier contemplating

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the possibility of his demise death be not proud wrote john dunn

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nearly 400 years ago and shakespeare’s hamlet for in that sleep of death what dreams

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may come the same things kept the same themes kept haunting me trench gas mask

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tank tent nurse warplane battleship

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refer to my painting style as reductionist symbolism whereby i try to reduce an idea to its

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essence i have attempted a zen-like examination a pure form inspired and motivated

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by the above themes i have endeavored to meld the left and right sides of my

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brain the analytic and the emotional to come together to invite contemplation

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of the eternal questions based on the subject painted what is war what is peace

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what is life what is death what is love what is hate

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what is existence what is transcendence what is deliverance and finally

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what is hope and what is joy so that was the essay that were and i

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tried to express the feelings that i had while i

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was doing all this research and reading letters and diaries and looking into this past

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and trying to make sense of how this young colonial nation of only 8

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million people sent these young kids overseas

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to be slaughtered and killed to look at some statistics today

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canada right now is 35 million people and we have lost 10 000 to cover 19.

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in 1918 canada was only 8 million and we lost 61 000 soldiers

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it’s hard it’s almost unfathomable unfathomable to think at the the

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the quantity of of death and dying that existed at that time and we have and we’re not even talking

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about the second world war here when tanks and planes and and were much more sophisticated

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but as a young nation how we were able to give up our youth

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for this cause was just for me a question that i couldn’t

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quite understand and through the paintings i tried

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to explore that mindset

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so and with this one this this first painting um you saw from when we

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installed the exhibition um we put it sort of you know the first image we really i think to our minds it was

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the first image but perhaps was the first image for you in in creating the series

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it’s it’s uh the poppy is such a has such as an enduring symbol of remembrance um

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well i called it emblem and it has its roots in many different

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um artists attempts to paint flowers you all know about andy warhol’s flowers and

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van gogh’s irises and sunflowers but the poppy is more central to canadian

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consciousness than any other flower in the sense that it was it represented the sacrifices of all of

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our our soldiers and um i reduced it to a very simple pure form

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the painting is 48 by 48 inches it’s a big painting four feet by four feet and uh

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the simplicity of it gives it that zen quality that uh i came to be very

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pleased with and i was using contrasting colors the turquoise against the brilliant red and

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the black remember i had started painting our flag back in 1981

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and i believe that everything you do in life whether you know it or not is a rehearsal for the next thing so i was very comfortable doing this

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painting after i i thought and rethought what am i going

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to paint about this war what will resonate what will make people

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stop and think what will be endearing what will be enduring what will be

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lasting and the title emblem hence that title it’s so clear that you

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know what you mentioned when you were in your essay about this your approach to painting being kind of a

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distillation of ideas right it’s so clear in this in this particular work well don’t

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forget i was brought up in the era of pop art when i was um

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a just anybody pardon my indulgence but if any of your

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viewers want to go to my website which is www.cpacteronword.com

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i talk about the fact that in my early years in my twenties i was very much

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influenced without realizing it subconsciously by my dna from my immigrant grandparents

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who left poor villages in eastern europe and russia to come to canada my maternal

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grandmother came to alberta in 1914 at the start of the first world war and

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she was still alive when i was a teenager i always make fun of this fact that my immigrant granny called me

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charles because she thought charles was plural and my family always did made jokes

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about that her calling me charles but as the grandson of immigrants

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i was trying to make sense of how this country um dealt with newcomers

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and especially look at canada today and our big cities how we are the world’s last best hope

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of society of decency and dignity which we should never ever take for

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granted how lucky we are to live in the kind of freedom that we do and acceptance and inclusivity

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uh i’m very proud of this country in that way when i first started to think about the flag well

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let’s go back to the early days i talked about my early work i’m jumping all over before

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in my 20s i was doing a lot of expressionist work which hearkened back to the world

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of my grandparents you could think of people like katy kolowitz a lot of what i call if it’s okay to say

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this on air my early up period i was trying to sort myself out in my twenties trying to figure out

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how did i become an artist why did i become an artist um again i make all these droll jokes

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my mother saw me on the floor painting at age 10 when the other kids were outside in the summer playing

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in the yard and she said you want to paint paint the bridge chairs do something useful but it took forever

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for me to try and make some sense of where i was going as an artist and my early work

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which many of your viewers may know i was lucky enough to meet margaret atwood at summer camp when i was 16 and she was

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19 and i fell in love with her poetry she used to send me her poems all the time

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and when i went off to graduate school in the united states at the cranberry academy of art a very

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elite school one of the beautiful american campuses from the 30s

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i spent all my time doing my mfa based on illustrating margaret’s poems

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which were in my opinion and i still believe brilliant and the final result of those six

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um limited edition folios that i did at cranbrook were i was working at expo 67 in

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montreal when margaret was in boston and she sent me the manuscript for

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her longer poem the journals of susanna moody and i was so overwhelmed by its

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brilliance that i knew everything i had done up until then was a rehearsal for what i wanted to do

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for the journals of susannah moody and it took me uh nearly two years to

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print the images i brought printers over from spain and we worked on the book for nine

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months from february to october of 1980 and the book came out in 1980 i’m gonna

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indulge the readers with one poem that might make them want to read the

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full outward um you all know about the cholera emmett epidemic in the 1840s and the irish who

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came to toronto uh at the time margaret’s poem about that epidemic

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is called further arrivals after we had crossed the long illness

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that was the ocean we sailed up river on the first island

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the immigrants threw off their clothes and danced like sand flies we left behind one by one

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the cities rotting with cholera one by one our civilized distinctions and entered

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a large darkness it was our own ignorance we entered

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i have not come out yet my brain gropes nervous tentacles in the night

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sends out fears hairy as bears demands lamps

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or waiting from my shadowy husband hears malice in the trees whispers

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i refuse to look in a mirror i need wolf’s eyes to see the truth whether the

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wilderness is real or not depends on who lives there now this brilliant

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poem was triggered my imagination and unfortunately we don’t have a picture of

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it to show you tonight but if you go onto my website and you click on

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books you will see the entire journals of susannah moody and i owe so much to margaret she was my

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muse when i was a kid and bless her heart here we are 60 odd years later still

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buddies and lifelong friends and i have nothing but admiration for her she is truly a genius so

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getting back to your question yes go ahead no going yes well here’s what happened

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i’m talking about pop art up until uh in 196 i graduated from the

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cranberry academy of art my professor i stood first in my class and my

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professor in detroit said man what are you going back to canada for you should go straight to new york i said there’s something that might be

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difficult for you americans to understand i love my country and i want to spend my life raising the bar there

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and i came back to toronto and i knew the one thing that i wanted to do

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was get a job at expo 67 i was 24 years old and i just knew i had to be there and

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it was spectacular it was like canada was finally glamorous and i was

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part of it and i was so thrilled um we i i got to take beer and

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sandwiches to alexander calder when they were installing his enormous stabile the 70 foot high sculpture

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on the inco plaza at expo and i was there for nearly two years and it was the most

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fabulous time to be in montreal and i was lucky because i had gone to the sorbonne

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i had an ear for french fell in love with the french language and culture and because i spoke french i got the job

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at expo so i was really lucky fast forward i finished an expo came back to toronto

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had my first show at gallery pascal in yorkville my second show my first one

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was on markham street under jack pawlik in 1964 68 doris pascal and

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i was then invited to come and teach at the university of calgary in 1969 and i drove alone across canada

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in a little mini miner and because i guess i was an

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impressionable kid still i was so overwhelmed by the size of the country

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that i knew something was happening inside my brain when i got out to

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calgary to teach at the university i was teaching graphics i happened to notice that every single

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canadian art magazine was full of articles about american pop artists

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and i began to contemplate what is the colonial mindset that we were taught to believe when we

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were students that if it came from elsewhere it was consequential

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and if it came from here who do you think you are that was the colonial mindset and here i

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was the grandson of immigrants neither french nor english but grew up

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in wasp toronto in the 40s went to quebec

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and i was lucky enough to have dipped into both cultures i got out to calgary i’m reading all

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these american magazines full of stuff on wesselman and warhol and oldenburg and

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all of the american pop artists and i thought wait a minute what’s going on why can’t we celebrate our own

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pop culture what did i look at for the first time mounties fort mcleod

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calgary cowgirls um the wheat the huge uh storage bins for

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wheat and i began to do these paintings in calgary which got me going

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and i was there for two years came back to toronto and what did i think about when andy

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warhol was busy doing soup cans and i did the toronto streetcar

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the red rocket we had a big show at the isaac’s gallery in 1972

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was my most successful exhibition i was so pleased that these crisp graphic images had

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become a hit and the next thing i knew ab isaacs talked me into going up to the arctic in

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1972 a foolish mistake i made in january it was 50 below zero

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i got pneumonia and pleurisy after two weeks i was supposed to be teaching the inuit printmaking

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i couldn’t handle it i had to be shipped out uh i ended up at the montreal general

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hospital they were on strike then i had to have a hospital an ambulance take me back to toronto western where i had

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pneumococcal pneumonia and i was in the hospital at age 29 for six weeks thankfully i recuperated thanks to a

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black nurse from jamaica in cape dorset who gave me amphicillin

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my doctor said without the ambison i would never have made it through anyway so i’m recuperating in toronto

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and i decide to go in that summer of 72

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to the gas bay where there was um um an eclipse of the sun

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i drove all the way out to the gaspe with friends and i heard on the radio that the queen was coming to niagara on

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the lake to open the new shaw festival theater in june of 1973

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and i had an epiphany i woke up in the middle of the night and i remember hearing on the radio uh

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trudeau kept calling her the queen of canada it was the first time that expression was being bandied about

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everybody thought it was the queen of england and then all the colonies but i had an epiphany and uh this is

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before photoshop i ended up with one of those old-school projectors

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and i um projected an image of the queen uh trooping the color on a horse and

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then i added i took the horse out on canvas and i put her on a moose instead

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well i showed these images to ab isaacs there were about 10 of them i was so excited and would you believe this great

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champion of canadian contemporary art said to me i don’t have to show these and i don’t have to tell you why

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i was shocked that he refused to show them but in those years people revered the monarchy

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and he saw them as a reverend so what did i do andy warhol was talking to me in my

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sleep i had bought my first house on shaw street in toronto for 26 thousand

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dollars in 1969. i renovated it myself

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after coming back from calgary and i decided to open the show the same day the queen was in niagara on

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the lake opening the shaw festival theater and i called my show the other shaw festival and a good

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friend of mine and his wife collected old cars they had a 54 rolls royce

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so while margaret atwood and joyce wieland were pouring tea on the lawn

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the rolls royce drove up and my friend larry’s wife sat in the back

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with a glove and a hat waving all afternoon like this it made headlines in newspapers

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around the world so andy was smiling the headlines canada in royal rage over

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queen on moose monarch has threatened to slash canvases artists warned to stay indoors

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the whole thing was hype and nonsense and ps i never sold one painting welcome to

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canada it took seven years in 1979

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where a brilliant woman from ottawa that many of you may know lorraine monk who started the canadian museum of

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photography moved to toronto befriended me came over one day to my

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studio saw the original painting of the queen on the moose which i think you just showed

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and said to me how much do you want for that i said i don’t know fifteen hundred dollars she said i’m not giving you that i said

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oh what will you give me she said i’m paying you ten thousand it’s the most important piece of post

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colonial pop art to have ever been produced in this country yes lorraine is now

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95 with alzheimer’s in a hospice her kids are in their 60s and they’re

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fighting over the painting it does belong at the national gallery some day

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but not while i’m alive or not while the queen is alive it will or will rain it’ll be history someday it’ll be

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part of our evolution from colony to nation and me trying to

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explore the psyche of the nation and the queen on the moose was the first image to do that and ps i made

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another 15 to 20 variations on it unabashedly unapologetically because it became so

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popular and you’ve probably seen my most recent one which was done in 2015

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it’s called decisions decisions it’s on my website and she’s standing back to the viewer in

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her chenille bathrobe at her ikea cupboard looking at all of her hats trying to decide which hat to wear

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that has been a huge hit but i can i can proudly say that that image of the

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queen on the moose in the last 40 years i’ve easily earned two million dollars from it

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and uh i’m so proud of that and i’m proud that it’s become part of the uh contemporary canon

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simple as that and after i did the queen on the moose i started doing just the moose it was

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eatable i decided it was time to get the queen off the moose’s back and to make the moose this majestic

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solitary creature as an allegory for the canadian identity into um

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a special symbol and i did just that some of my best known paintings there’s

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one called tour de force of a moose on a tightrope walking over the cn tower

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another one of a moose on a diving board i had such fun they were my sort of

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chagall type mooses flying and jumping and at the brink of um huge cliffs ready to jump

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all of them these sort of symbolic images where the moose being an um

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a representative of the canadian psyche after the moose came i’d already talked about the

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streetcar the moose then uh i was doing portraits in the 70s and 80s

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of peter newman and margaret atwood and jim callwood so many well-known torontonians many of

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whom are now no longer with us but i bought a farm

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up in oro medanti an hour north of toronto i read richler’s

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atten the apprenticeship of duty kravitz where this jewish kid from montreal ends

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up buying a hundred acre farm and thinks he’s arrived and i decided i had to have a hundred acre

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farm too i bought this rundown farm which needed so much work it was in oro township

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and i named it oro fixation and i used to do summer canada day parties

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up there with all the artists from queen street and would come for dejanescer lab for

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luncheons on the grass and i’d go into orillia to buy butter tarts and go to the goodwill the best butter

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tarts in ontario from aurelia but that’s open to argument of course

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many people would differ but it’s wilkies and original anyway uh i did a whole series of paintings

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called figures in a landscape and had a show in 1979 on queen street

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called figures in a landscape and then one night at the farm in 1981

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i had bought a rayon flag at canadian tyrant aurelia and i had an old 2×4 and i stuck it in a fence

32:59

post hole and i was lying on a hammock at twilight and the flag started to move in the in

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the light and i had another epiphany but it’s so much

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more organic and beautiful when it’s waving in the wind under the

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influence of light and i started to paint the flag

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and i painted and painted and painted and in that same year i was at the height of my

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queen street empire i had opened a restaurant if you want me to stop talking about all this and talk about

33:33

the art just tell me i was just gonna connect this to the flight when you’re finished oh i see yes thank you okay yeah the two

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uh the two uh banners there i used that image for john mccrae of course who was from

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guelph and i’ve had fun and i also did it for in a painting of the war of 1812

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called dress to kill right a soldier seen from the back with the two banners but what i discovered was that the flag

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in motion was so much more poetic and organic than stationary and i

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finished 30 paintings and at the time i had opened a restaurant on queen’s street

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called gracies which only lasted 18 months because when we started the cop

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borrowing costs for 10 and when we were forced to close they were 23 it was a nightmare and i had built a

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brand new elegant building a gallery on the main floor called the iga

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galleries because it used to be an iga supermarket and i opened my show with

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the painted flag in these glamorous new galleries toronto i’ve never seen anything like it

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on november the 7th 1981 oh my goodness we’re so close

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it’s 80 it’s 39 years ago almost to the night when my show opened

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the day after pierre trudeau had announced the patriation of the constitution

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and all of the toronto art world was there barbara from pierre burton margaret

35:07

atwood peter zoske june callwood most of them now no longer with us and the throttle

35:14

that i once knew has disappeared because it’s now a city of five million people

35:20

and it’s a it’s a living miracle because it’s two-thirds um newcomers two-thirds

35:26

visible minorities to people from all over the world and it’s canada at its most accepting and most

35:33

decent and dignified but having said all that the toronto that i once knew is no longer there the show opened

35:41

1981 and i was savaged in the press in the globe and mail by john bentley

35:47

mays then art critic of the globe and mail and he said among other things more over the couch

35:54

art for the walls of patriotic dentists at which point bluma appel who was one

36:00

of my biggest collectors fabulous woman montrealer had moved to toronto and owned a whole bunch of my

36:06

work bluma was ready to sue the globe and mail she thought he was being so nasty

36:11

she thought it was slander but because of john bentley mays later on and this is why i have repeat

36:17

that whatever you do in life whether you know it or not is a rehearsal for the next thing i invented the name of a fake art critic

36:24

with a double-barreled hyphenated name hint he comes from three rivers

36:29

and his name dawn rouge humber you have to be from toronto to

36:35

get it those are the three rivers in toronto and i would take out ads in the globe and mail when i opened my own gallery

36:41

here the moose factory in 1998 and i would make up these fake quotes from don rush

36:48

humber so stunning words fail me a legend in his own mind i’m a mnemonic mimesis of

36:56

imagery but go on and on like that so i had such fun with that thank you for using adobe flash player

37:03

remind me thank you i don’t know what that’s all about we should we should maybe keep going on the on the series just

37:09

uh yes okay now how do we get back onto the large screen again uh are you

37:15

still with me can you see me we can still see you okay i don’t know what happened to

37:20

the large screen zoom is here update to five now should i do that

37:25

don’t update right now okay how do i get that to open again let’s just see well maybe i don’t have to i can

37:32

look at the little um i can look at the little thumbnail but i’m curious to know how come i lost the

37:38

big screen it might be trying to update but all right i’m going to go

37:43

update 25 let’s see if it comes back download soon client for meetings

37:48

if um with the portrait of john mccrae this i was saying this is so significant um to guelph um and this is this the

37:56

reason that you thought about you know obviously you had the art gallery of wealth in your mind as a place for this

38:04

you know and i know that um you know over the years that you know in flanders fields has been you know has

38:11

has been interpreted in different ways and taken on new meaning from a call to remembrance to a call for

38:18

peace and creating this series um and reflecting on mcrae and his poem and the poppy as a symbol

38:24

um did you sort of think uh in terms of um a call to action or a call for peace

38:31

specifically i guess from your essay it was more a reflection on peace perhaps

38:36

um i was so impressed with mcrae’s poem

38:42

i put him right up there without would i think he was brilliant in doing that and i mean it’s only the most uh

38:49

uh famous canadian poem that i can think of and it’s so haunting

38:55

and so beautiful um that uh i wanted to pay him homage

39:03

i wanted to do something and that’s where i use the two banners of a new flag and i thought it worked one of the

39:10

things i was noting about you know very i guess the the sort of departure in your work

39:16

um in this image as well as other works in this series is you know instead of sort of the um kind

39:22

of the pop aesthetic you’ve also there’s a representational element right

39:27

you’ve almost you’ve captured the features and it’s it’s almost in terms of like um depicting a sculpture

39:33

monument for example um it was just an observation i have because it’s a departure for you really

39:40

um well with the trench letter which is an enormous three panel triptych

39:45

um i thought so long about that how could i get to the essence of these poor kids in

39:53

these muddy trenches in the dark attempting to write a letter home and

39:59

there’s a lot of power in that triptych and i’m not just saying this because i’m talking to you but i’m so pleased

40:06

with the installation at the art gallery of guelph it’s such a lovely marriage of the painting and

40:12

the space and this means so much to an artist to have that uh beautiful uh

40:17

complimentary space for that painting the three large ones are

40:22

cortege the healers translator and dazzle the boat

40:29

yeah and i just you know aside from the subject matter i

40:35

had such a good time with the compositions and just creating an aura around each

40:42

painting that i’m not much prouder to see them um

40:47

hanging where they are i’m just thrilled and i’m not to embarrass you but shauna

40:54

you did fabulous due diligence in getting these paintings where they belong

40:59

and for me it’s legacy stuff i’m going to be 78 next month i’m in good health thank goodness but

41:05

this is when your last quarter this is when artists have to start thinking about where should their best works go and the

41:12

fact that they should be seen in public institutions is a is the prime consideration and so

41:18

from that point of view i’m so grateful you’re welcome for that um question

41:24

about this one um you know i guess one of the things when you think about younger generations they probably had no

41:31

sense of trench warfare um that ballots were fought on the ground

41:37

in the ground basically was that you know capturing that you know part of what you were you know

41:43

capturing experiences that that we don’t have some physical or visual

41:49

records of again i i just thought the whole the the

41:55

trying to put myself in that space with that the gunfire and the filth

42:02

and the cold in france belgium germany just the sheer atrocity of having to

42:10

deal with that on an extended period of time and then whoever survived ending up with

42:17

ptsd you know what that is post-traumatic stress disorder uh i did do a painting called lament

42:24

which i think you had uh as part of that as well with a sort of crumpled up figure on a bid that

42:30

was also bought by the collector in bangladesh but um

42:36

for me to be able to address this kind of work with gravity and seriousness rather than me

42:44

being playful i did do one droll images i think you have seen you can

42:49

put it up on the screen there called conclusion and it’s a big handwriting with the

42:55

mooses right skeleton it’s about mortality and it says so i guess that’s it then

43:01

yeah that’s another pactorism yeah yes we’ll get to that one that’s at the very end but yeah

43:08

we’ll we will show that um someone’s actually also asked to see the queen on the moose and i’ll go back to that uh as we near the end as

43:15

well um let’s talk about daz i was saying this is one of my favorite paintings of

43:20

yours in this series because of the history of the painting of dazzle ships um you know

43:26

painting the ships themselves but then also recording dazzle ships and visual art so yeah

43:33

yeah the question again just uh you want to talk about this painting and

43:38

it’s very this one’s very pop art and refers to which one dazzle yes well that

43:45

just pushed all my buttons as soon as i saw some sketches of it they were just yellowed sketches uh

43:52

and i thought a lot about futurism and buccioni and art deco and even fred astaire

43:59

movies i mean it had that look about it from the 20s and the 30s so this is a little earlier

44:05

but um i guess to be a little self-indulgent i didn’t know a

44:11

lot about battleships all i knew is i wanted to paint that i wanted to color it in my with my palette and turn

44:19

it into the turquoise and black and white and yellow and i just got a lot of pleasure from painting it

44:26

and uh they were painted that way uh for camouflage way back when

44:32

hard to believe eh yes absolutely um and you you

44:40

can you talk a little bit about the difference why you chose diptychs or triptychs in some cases

44:45

yeah well i have to be a um frank about that as well when i went

44:51

to the lieutenant governor’s suite in queens park and i saw this huge 19th century space with 15 foot

44:58

high walls and i asked them could i do these large

45:04

images and they were very cooperative about it and david only who was then lieutenant

45:10

governor was just before his term ended um they did a couple of magnificent

45:17

receptions for the show and they brought in um 95 year old veterans which was very

45:23

touching and uh the show was extended it went on for nine months

45:29

at queen’s park and then it moved on i took three of the paintings to london

45:34

in 2016 and eight of them to bangladesh in 2018

45:40

so they’ve traveled quite a bit they’ve seen the world um these are some that that

45:46

are not in the exhibition but airborne the plane yes i have to be honest i

45:52

still own airborne i like it a lot it doesn’t necessarily it’s not necessarily about war but it was

45:58

the first war where those little biplanes were used and i just have a certain affection for

46:04

it um we’ll talk maybe in a year or two i might both have it we’ll see that’s

46:10

interesting um also you know that your your interest in the sky

46:15

you know this goes it reminds me of your flag paintings with the sort of the vivid blue sky behind yes always

46:21

behind the backdrop yeah um i have worked for

46:27

many decades in flat color where i juxtapose an image which may be

46:33

volumetric like a portrait or an object with a flat background

46:39

uh an american artist who has done similar work as alex katz uh but my work

46:47

he said subjectively i think my work is a little more partially intellectual and it has

46:53

different layers of meaning which are there

46:58

for the viewer to interpret right i would have very much like to

47:05

have shown these paintings of the war museum in ottawa there was a gentleman who came from the

47:10

war museum and saw the show at queen’s park and he said he loved everything but they

47:15

had a policy that they only showed artists from that time uh you know whether it was

47:21

varley or jackson whoever painted war from that very time

47:26

but i think it might be interesting someday to be able to show them in ottawa right i’ve just opened up tank top here

47:35

yes that’s another one of my surrealist images of a nurse wearing a tank on her head um

47:43

it’s just for some reason reminded me of some of the ladies hats of the period that’s what i that’s what i did yeah the

47:52

next one is knight the campus house one and then we have knight to canvas house twos yes i was

47:59

fascinated by many of the letters written from inside tents on cold

48:05

wind swept muddy fields and of course the tent uh goes all the

48:11

way back to governor simcoe who brought a canvas house to the wilds of upper

48:17

canada to ontario and lived in it at the foot of bathurst street for several years

48:23

but i became fascinated by the architecture of the tent and these may be a little um

48:30

removed from the horror of war and everything else but they were pure form

48:35

paintings of pure form and i really enjoyed playing with titles one of them i called

48:41

to all intents of course the canvas house these are so

48:47

vivid and really kind of you know architectural yeah i was glad to include them

48:54

with the other paintings of the suffering right that one cortez is so so haunting of these poor guys coming

49:01

back from a gas attack [Music] that was one that yeah and here i have

49:07

gasps now yes yeah that’s probably the most

49:12

gruesome that you can see the look in the horse’s eyes and the horse is terrified

49:18

and the dog they had to uh protect their animals uh and they all wore these

49:24

masks it was the first war that had gas uh as the a

49:30

gas attacks uh with that and uh many people suffered from it and

49:35

had permanent injuries from it hard to believe unfathomable yes

49:43

here’s one of uh the painted flag yes uh now that our flag as you know came

49:51

in 1965 after a very um

49:58

emotional fight in parliament between the liberals and the conservatives john

50:04

dieffen baker and lester b pearson they called it the pearson pennant but i remember at the time i think i was

50:11

23 years old when we got the new flag and how proud i was uh that we finally

50:17

got an image that we could call our own i had nothing against uh the union jack and our ontario flag

50:25

but i felt the time had come like we had grown we had changed we had

50:30

emerged we had a textbook in school called canada from colony to nation

50:35

and i know how upset john diefenbaker was about the new flag and here’s an

50:43

irony there is a different baker museum as uh at the university of saskatchewan

50:48

and i donated a painting that i did of the different bakers welcoming the kennedys to ottawa airport

50:54

in 1960 called obscure canadian historical event

50:59

and a painting a huge painting of a new canadian flag and they’re both now hanging in the john

51:04

d baker museum in

51:19

yes that is now in the charter house in london where i had um many of these paintings it’s a 15th

51:27

century building where that became an arms house and later housed

51:32

many soldiers from the first world war wounded soldiers and they were so gracious to me and did

51:40

such a beautiful job installing the exhibition it was in august and september of uh 2016 but i donated it to the

51:48

museum and that’s where it is now and i called it pizza of course because the nurse is the

51:53

lifesaver and the wounded soldier the young wounded soldier

52:00

it’s also you know a reminder you know the the healers that painting as well when you look at

52:05

these together that you know the role that women played in the war and um you know the just the

52:13

other dimensions of war how it’s so all involving for for a country well i

52:18

did read many nurses diaries and honestly i was so moved by the descriptions

52:26

of how they had to deal with these young boys with mangled bodies coming in and how they

52:32

had to remove limbs and how they had to do all kinds of horrible operations without the use of

52:39

good anesthetics in the field the suffering is indescribable we are so

52:46

spoiled the wars we have now are like millions of um

52:55

miles away inside our heads as to what they went through on the battlefields then

53:00

uh second world war still had it the korean war still had it but times have changed so much now that

53:07

they’d rather just blow somebody up with a bomb and uh kill 200 000 people at once you

53:12

know but you have to ask ourselves once again how much better are we than the apes do

53:17

we kill for terror territory do we kill for power uh is the is my win over right

53:26

all the time and uh [Music] look what happened in london in the second world war

53:32

how the royal family had to leave and how uh so many people and the bombing from

53:38

germany i mean it’s hard for us to imagine all this in 2020

53:43

this kind of gruesome human activity is is war our lowest point of human behavior

53:51

and here we are now with coded uh ironically what is it and how many have

53:57

died all over the world now 300 000 or something out of a population of seven billion it’s infinitesimal

54:05

compared to uh compared to what we went through in the two world wars

54:11

do you think um you know given that we’ve lost the generation that was directly involved in world war one um and

54:19

and losing touch with with both world wars um don’t think that creative practices

54:25

have a greater role to play and you know in documents i would hope

54:30

that anybody who gets to stand up up close and personal with my paintings

54:36

that it would cause them to ponder the meaning of life and death and how

54:45

at our worst we create death rather than life and where

54:52

does this mindset come from and will we ever change when you think about the universe and

54:59

how infinitesimal it is and how on earth let’s face it a third

55:05

of the wars are because of uh religious fanaticism and at what point i’m a happy pacifist

55:13

agnostic so it’s kept me feeling liberated and not worrying about a lot of

55:18

the dogma of religion but i still wonder whether we will ever move on to a higher

55:24

level and become more enlightened in time having learned from these horrible

55:32

events i do believe even now when you see people praising you know we’ve got these

55:39

clubs like the royal canadian military institute and we do praise the military in some ways

55:45

because of the how they’ve defended our country but in what way do should we praise the

55:51

military um are maybe someone from the military

55:57

would like to respond back to that but there is a kind of a set

56:03

idea that they are heroes because they protected us against tyranny and against oppression

56:11

and in many ways that’s been canada’s great stay and strength that we are peacekeepers we

56:17

try very hard to retain that that role

56:25

i have lament up right now yes there is a crumpled figure on a bed

56:32

suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder uh he may have um

56:40

survived the wounds and the killing and the shelling but you live he lives with it for the

56:46

rest of his life that’s what ptsd is um and i tried to get some sense of that

56:53

just that one image of the figure uh shattered a bit lying alone on a bed

57:01

um again emotion recollected in tranquility trying to understand the meaning

57:09

of all of this why did we do it what were the results did we move on to

57:15

a higher level have we learned enough from war to help us

57:21

uh to get better to be better to respect

57:26

one another more to deal with so-called enemies in a more enlightened way

57:34

there you have it that’s an artist’s uh thought and then the final image is the is the

57:40

moose the skeleton skeletal moose that’s me being somewhat mischievous again like my usual self a little

57:47

play on words the expression so i guess that’s it then a kind of

57:52

admission of mortality actually comes from a funny other line at thanksgiving when

58:00

after a 12-course meal my mother would bring out the prunes and my father and she’d say this is for your digestion

58:07

and my father would say well i guess that’s it then the end of the meal but i played around with that image and

58:14

with that phrase because i love working with phrases and words as well of a whole

58:19

series of word paintings but there’s something ironic and um you know underneath a

58:28

little bit of humor is a probe trying to figure out once again

58:33

what is the meaning of life we’re only all here for 70 or 80 or 90 years

58:39

then it’s somebody else’s turn to take over it’s not our turn anymore and i’m just hoping that i was able to

58:45

record my time uh with a poetic visual

58:51

sense and an enduring love of painting that will live on ours longa

58:58

vita braves latin art endures life is short

59:04

we have a question um actually from terry williams he says thank you so much for the

59:09

insights you’ve offered into your body of work i’m interested to know how you might imagine the iconography that you created

59:16

changing or evolving in the years to come i’m thinking specifically of how your work will enter further into

59:21

conversation with the steadily diversifying community of artists we are so fortunate to have in

59:27

canada the images you’ve created and worked with are so central to our visual identity and sense of nation

59:33

and as that identity itself evolves it’s not hard to imagine that dismantled that this mantle being taken up by

59:39

others who will vastly bring vastly different perspectives do you ever imagine what

59:45

forms that might take excellent question and a good point because we are now living

59:51

in a world where injustice collecting has become almost a popular pastime whether it’s

59:58

first nations whether it’s indians whether it’s uh um whether it’s east i’m not

1:00:04

indians uh women oppressed minorities uh lgbt people uh it depends on who

1:00:11

you’re talking to but it has become the norm to bring up these injustices

1:00:18

many of which are merited and i i like your viewers question because i

1:00:24

think so much of the art that we’re going to be seeing in the next decades will in fact be

1:00:31

you know what happened with the residential schools how women were treated sexually

1:00:38

in so many horrible ways off reserves and first nation stuff many many artists from those backgrounds

1:00:46

are going to be um searching out and exploring those

1:00:51

issues and we will be seeing more and more of it in the future as it should be that’s actually

1:00:58

it’s um i guess one of the things that i was interested in in your work is this

1:01:03

you know the memory dimension of it and the other exhibition that we have up currently at the art gallery of guelph

1:01:08

is that parallels this is called sites of memory and it actually is highlights uh the work of india and

1:01:15

black indigenous and and persons of color um who are exploring

1:01:20

their own identities and experiences and looking at those through the lens of memory as well

1:01:26

you know the kinds of traditions and cultural memories that they’re working with so um i really see these two projects in

1:01:33

dialogue with each other in some ways um i think this is great and i think we are ready for

1:01:39

more of these kinds of insights from people who have experienced issues that they would like

1:01:46

to recreate whether in images and film and

1:01:52

photography and music whatever that the creative genius of humans

1:01:58

uh is just waiting for people to uh to utilize to do stuff with this and i’m

1:02:05

looking forward to seeing more and more of it we have another question here um how did

1:02:11

you come to decide to use pastels in these pieces interesting that’s a

1:02:17

pragmatic question about my materials i was always a printmaker i started as a printmaker drawing on

1:02:25

lithographic stones with something called touch t-u-s-c-h-e which is a suspension

1:02:32

of ink of grease in uh liquid and crayons and

1:02:38

i was always um comfortable drawing and in my own technique i managed to

1:02:44

create my was a combination of colored pencil

1:02:51

pastel which i would then spray with krylon varnish and fix it and fixative and then

1:02:58

i could paint over it with a mixture of acrylic and gels acrylic gels

1:03:06

and work it and work it and then once i’d finished the central image surrounded in flat

1:03:12

color that became my modus operandi that was what i enjoyed doing

1:03:19

okay um and another question here from susan davidson the lament pose reminds me of a

1:03:25

crucifixion but one of the soul am i reading something into it

1:03:31

you’re being very perceptive it has that vibe it certainly does um there is one called across

1:03:38

the lake i don’t think it’s was shown tonight but it does look like a christ figure

1:03:44

standing in front of a of a very rough choppy lake and uh it has that vibe to it

1:03:52

there’s no question i yeah that is uh all of the questions

1:04:00

we have from the audience um i just wanted to i guess we’re at eight

1:04:07

o’clock so perhaps we should sign off but i just wanted to thank you charles so much for the conversation and

1:04:14

for the background on the work and your own practice um you know i think it’s uh so important

1:04:21

to kind of you know especially this time of year but really every day to be thinking about you know canada’s commitment to the war

1:04:27

effort and the consequences for those involved that you evoke so so clearly and poetically in your work

1:04:35

um i’d like to invite everyone to come to the art gallery of guelph to see unless we forget of the paintings that

1:04:40

we have on view here it’s now on view until uh january 10th 2021

1:04:46

um so if you can’t make it now you’ve got a little while to come visit um but uh anyway i would like to thank

1:04:52

everyone for joining us tonight and um thank you charles i don’t know if you’ve anything you want to say

1:04:58

i’d just like to sign off and say how truly grateful i am that you folks did such a wonderful

1:05:04

installation and i honestly say pardon my chauvinism it’s worth the drive to wealth it really

1:05:11

is worth going to see how beautifully installed it is and um

1:05:16

i hope you’ll have a guest book so people can put some comments in but i’m honored and proud to have the

1:05:22

show there and i think it’s ended up where it belongs and for that i am truly grateful

1:05:28

thank you so much

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