Moynahan Studio: Friday #FemArt

Showing posts with label Friday #FemArt. Show all posts

Friday, January 9, 2015

Friday #FemArt: Doris McCarthy (1910-2010)

This week's Friday FemArt post is about Doris McCarthy. I have been researching her for some time. I love her story and I love her art.

She produced an unparalleled body of work spanning over 75 years with an estimated 6000 paintings in a variety of media. She was elected the first woman President of the Ontario Society of Artists and has taught some of Canada's most distinguished creative people.

A quick sketch that I made of Doris McCarthy
in my art journal September 2014 ("Plein Air" collage)

Doris McCarthy "Holy Point" Oil on Canvas 34" x 48"

Here is what I have come to love and know

about Doris McCarthy's wonderful life:

Dorothy was born in 1910 in Calgary, Alberta,
She grew up in the beaches area of Toronto.
In 1926 she earned a scholarship to the Ontario College of Art (OCA) where she was mentored by some of the premier Canadian artists of the early twentieth century (i.e. Arthur Lismer and JEH MacDonald)
She attended the Ontario College of Art from 1926 to 1930
She became a teacher shortly after 1930 and taught most frequently at Central Technical School in downtown Toronto from 1932 until she retired in 1972.
She traveled abroad extensively (five continents) and painted the landscapes of various countries
Her best known art is her Canadian landscapes and her depictions of Arctic icebergs.
She loved people and was quite sociable but also had a great appreciation of solitude, most often in the form of the northern Ontario wilderness.
Some of her early painting trips involved adventures in Muskoka, Haliburton, Georgian Bay and the Arctic with groups of other devoted artists (usually women artists).
Retirement in 1972 (at 62 years of age) freed her to paint full-time and fulfill her dream of visiting the Arctic,
She was a lifelong learner. In 1989, (at 79 years of age) she graduated from the University of Toronto Scarborough with a B.A in English
She died at 100 years of age. She passed away peacefully on the morning of November 25, 2010, at Fool’s Paradise, her beloved home atop the Scarborough Bluffs

“Fool’s Paradise will continue to be…

a place for healing, for laughter,

for shared tears, for growing.”

~Doris McCarthy~

(from Doris McCarthy – My Life)

5 Minute Video of Doris McCarthy's Life

More videos (6) of Doris McCarthy's Canada
Fool's Paradise (How I would love to spend time there!)

(Excerpt: Ontario Heritage Trust) "Fool’s Paradise was the home and studio of Canadian landscape artist, writer and educator Doris McCarthy (1910-2010). The site overlooks Lake Ontario along Toronto’s Scarborough Bluffs. McCarthy first visited the property during a sketching trip in November 1939. She was immediately inspired by the landscape views and picturesque setting, and purchased the property for $1,250. In 1940, she had a small cottage constructed on the site by local builder Forest Telfer.

McCarthy’s mother, Mary Jane, saw the purchase as extravagant, referring to it as “that fool’s paradise of yours.” The name stuck in McCarthy’s mind and the property soon became known as Fool’s Paradise. Originally, the cottage was a summer retreat, but it became her permanent home in 1946.

Fool’s Paradise evolved and grew over McCarthy’s time there, guided by her personal preferences. The one-storey wood frame structure comprises attached wings off the central small studio, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. The interior of Fool’s Paradise follows an irregular layout, as wings have been added to the original cottage over the years. ......" read more here

Links There are plenty of links to follow below to explore more about Doris McCarthy's art and learn more about her interesting life.

"The National Gallery doesn’t own a thing of mine

and it damn well should,”

McCarthy told the Globe and Mail in 1990.

Visit Frankiusi Photography for more beautiful photographsof
Dorothy at Fools Paradise!!

“So here I am, content to enjoy every day as it comes,

and wise enough to thank God for his mercies and rejoice in them.

My only regrets are my economies (never my extravagances)

– particularly those of spirit and love.”

~Doris McCarthy~

Honours

For her continuing contribution to Canada's artistic community, Doris McCarthy has received The Order of Canada, The Order of Ontario, five Honorary Doctorates, and an Honorary Fellowship to The Ontario College of Art and Design. In November 1999, McCarthy was named the first Artist of Honour at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. On March 11, 2004 the University of Toronto, Scarborough opened the Doris McCarthy Gallery in her honour and will eventually hold her archives.

A Visual Artist First and Foremost....

Globe and Mail quote: "A visual artist first and foremost, McCarthy was also a teacher, author, lecturer, wilderness advocate, handywoman, storyteller, hostess, world traveller, philanthropist, cat lover and virtuoso figure skater who was able to toss off showy spins well into her eighties. She was a whiz at cryptic crosswords, and enjoyed taxing her linguistic skills at solo Scrabble. Her friends talked rapturously about her formidable peanut butter cookies, luscious breads, super-deluxe marmalade, and rhubarb and dandelion wine...... For McCarthy the glass was always full. Early every morning on a painting trip, she would declare: "We have a whole new chance." Her mantra was the word "yes" and her Holy Grail was the infinite glory of the Canadian landscape. As she herself wrote: "I love the world. I love nature. I love creation. I love life.""

I am grateful for Dorthy's art and life story. How it inspirits me so...

Friday, November 28, 2014

Friday #FemArt: Alma Duncan (1917-2004)

1st Conference of Canadian Artists at Queen's University

This photograph caught my eye when it was tweeted by the Library and Archives Canada (@LibraryArchives) on November 14, 2014 and it has inspired this #FemFriday artist post about Alma Duncan (1917-2004) (who is seated in the second row wearing the white dress).

Alma was an Ottawa based artist who was born in Paris, Ontario in 1917, and later moved to Montreal in 1936 where she worked and studied under artists Ernst Neumann and Goodridge Roberts.

A self-portrait of the artist Alma Duncan
Credit: Library and Archives Canada / C-146139 Copyright: Alma Duncan, c/o Audrey McLaren

Alma

Ottawa Art Gallery

October 3, 2014 – January 11, 2015

I decided to visit the Art Gallery of Ottawa to see the exhibit called "Alma"

before it closes on January 11, 2015.

"Alma" is the title of the career retrospective of Duncan's work, now at the Ottawa Art Gallery to Jan. 11, 2015. This is the first ever retrospective of Alma Duncan.The exhibit includes Duncan's works from as early as the 1930s covering 55 years of her life.

Alma's Woman series (1965) on display at the Art Gallery of Ottawa

According to the Ottawa Citizen article, Alma "painted ... compulsively, and in ever-changing choices of media and style. And she did more than just paint: she may be better known as a film-maker of international acclaim."

Alma's Abstracts on display at the Art Gallery of Ottawa

OAG co-curator Jaclyn Meloche says about Duncan, "She wasn't just a painter. She wasn't just a filmmaker. She wasn't just a landscape pen and ink drawer. She was a woman who was uninhibited, brave and strong and curious and never let anything stop her,"

"(Duncan) made art every day of her life. It was an extension of her,"

(via kate.tenehouse)

Young Black Girl (1940) on display at the
Art Gallery of Ottawa
(This painting inspired a poem by George Elliott Clarke)

Ottawa Citizen May 27, 1947

Alma and her friend Audrey (Babs) McLaren (1916-2014) lived in homes in Arnprior, Cumberland and Ottawa, Ontario where they loved to entertain, always in the company of beloved family dogs.

Together they formed Dunclaren Productions and their stop animation films, peopled with handmade puppets, garnered international recognition.

Alma Duncan creating her NFB film Folksong Fantasy (1951) in Ottawa
Photo: Audrey McLaren

Alma Duncan, (left), animation artist, and Nina Finn, of the music department,
National Film Board of Canada. October 1949.

Alma's film props on display at the Art Gallery of Ottawa

Friday, June 20, 2014

Friday #FemArt: Artist Louise Bourgeois

"I want to be both secretive and exhibitionist"

This post is about Artist Louise Bourgeois (famous for sculpting spiders such as the one in front of the National Gallery in Ottawa). The Telegraph ran an article: Inside Louise Bourgeois' New York home.

Her townhouse in New York was 13 feet wide.
Louise loved to sit by this window drawing and writing, watching the street.

What I loved learning about her from this article:

At 13ft wide, her townhouse in New York served as both her home and her studio.
Bourgeois moved there in 1962 when she was 51 years old.
She would die there almost half a century later at the age of 98.
Drawing, painting and sculpting since 1938, incredible success would come to her in the 1980s
“She was already 70,” says assistant and friend Jerry Gorovoy, “yet things were just beginning.”
Saving and re-using things came to characterise much of Louise’s life.
Louise filled her journals religiously, sometimes three times a day.
On a wall to wall pinboard in the town house hangs an exhibition poster that reads,‘Does feminism conflict with artistic standards?’
The Chelsea townhouse reminds Gorovoy of Louise and he sees her spirit there: "But when I see her, she’s always sitting in the back room with the window open, listening to the children in the schoolyard behind. She was like a child, in the end. An arrested child.”