Interview with Janice E. McHaffie, Gallery A Artist in Residence

Janice E. McHaffie is our Gallery A ArtLab artist is residence from From January 5 – February 28. Prior to her artist talk on February 7, we sat down with Janice to learn more about her work and what she has been up to during her residency.

RMG: Hi Janice! Please tell us about yourself?

JM: I am an artist from Claremont. I have about 16 years of university level art specific training including 5 years fine arts at Durham College and a year at OCAD. Having started with stone carving at the University of Guelph in the early 1970’s, my work has progressed and metamorphosed into an eclectic range of paintings with hundreds of them in public and private collections around the world. I am also the Youth Liaison for Pineridge Arts Council, Pickering.

RMG: What materials do you work with?

JM: While at The RMG I will be working with acrylic ink, acrylic paint, acrylic gels and mediums, watercolour papers canvas board and stretched canvas. I will also be sculpting from whatever moves me at the time to work with.

Janice McHaffie

RMG: Why were you interested in Gallery A’s Art Lab residency? What have you made while working as an artist in residence/ what will you be working on during your residency?

JM: I was interested in the residency in Gallery A because I wanted to interact with the public while creating and wanted to invite them to actively participate with the theme and two art projects. So far, I have only created three small canvas works and some ink on yupo. By February 25 (closing ceremony 7-9pm) I will have filled all the walls in Gallery A with paintings. I will also have created 2 collages and a sculpture. I am hoping to have close to 100 small paintings done by that date.

RMG: Can you please tell us a bit about your exhibition on view in Gallery A or what you intend to create for the viewer?

JM: The paintings on view in Gallery A and everything I create while I am there is following my theme of Dying and Death. I will be opening the floor to talk about these topics, hopefully helping people to converse in an easier format through the visual aid of the artwork.

Janice McHaffie

RMG: What inspires you? Is there a particular artist’s work that has influenced your practice?

JM: What inspires me is everything and everyone who passes through my life, from what others perceive as the profound to the mundane. Children affect me most with their boundless energy and creative inquisitiveness. I love how they just spit out what they are thinking. Coincidentally that is exactly how I am. Artists who have inspired me include Auguste Rodin since I started with stone sculpture, and my initial paintings were inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe. Now I just paint what comes out of me. My work is always about texture and the layers of life, I have been called the “texture queen” for years, and I guess they have a point : ). Every day is an adventure to me and at the RMG. I get to share the adventure with all of you!

Ray Mead: Living Within

Ray Mead: Living Within came together quickly as a result of a change in the RMG’s programming schedule. Whenever I go through the racks in the vault, Mead’s work begs for my attention so organizing this exhibition was an incredible pleasure.

Bringing together over thirty works by Mead that range from the 1940s to 1990 has solidified what I’ve always known: Ray Mead is a fabulous painter and a wonderful colourist. While it’s impossible to talk about favourites, I do have works that I’m drawn to more than others. One of these is Door. It’s a large (203 x 173 cm), post painterly oil on canvas work that was painted around 1961. Mead has spoken about his love of black: “black is a delightful colour—it has so many variations.” The blacks in Door have their own tonal variations: deeply saturated in parts, and less so in others. But it’s that orange—just visible beneath the circular element on the left and hugging the centre on the right margin that ties the work together for me.

In writing about Door, Mead says that metaphorically the work “was a door for me to pass into a new era of experimentation.” This fabulous painting has existed for over fifty years and still draws one in towards that new era.

Linda Jansma
Senior Curator
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery

Interview with Gallery A artist Toni Hamel

“Hot Topics” blog posts come from the desk of Sam Mogelonsky, our Communications & Social Media Coordinator.

The RMG caught up with artist Toni Hamel. Her exhibition, The land of Id is, on view in Gallery A from March 3 to 29. She will speak about her work on Sunday 29 March from 1-3pm.

The RMG: Hi Toni! Please tell us a bit about yourself?

Toni Hamel: I am an Oshawa-based visual artist. I received my BFA from the Academy of Fine Arts of Lecce, Italy in 1983, but my career as a visual artist is still considered ’emerging’ in that my first public show took place only about six years ago, in 2009. However, in these short years I have been fortunate enough to achieve some level of recognition, having received three Ontario Arts Council grants and many other awards. More recently, one of my artworks has been purchased by the Archives of Ontario for inclusion in the Government of Ontario’s permanent art collection, certainly a great honour of which I am extremely grateful.

RMG: What materials do you work in?

TH: As an inter-disciplinary artist the material utilized in my work is varied. I am fond of vintage and recycled objects for instance, which I often use in my installations and sculptural pieces. Their inclusion is never gratuitous however, as these objects need to carry either an aesthetic or a semantic function. Thus far my practice has been focused on drawing, but painting will also be part of my oeuvre in the near future.

RMG: Why were you interested in Gallery A’s Art Lab residency? What have you made while working as an artist in residence for the month of February?

TH: Originally my intention was to create a large site-specific installation for Gallery A, and that was in fact the reason why I had originally applied for the Art Lab residency. Unfortunately scheduling oversights prevented me from utilizing Gallery A during that period of time, an event that forced me to revise my plans at the last minute. Eventually I decided to work on large-scale paintings that are part of “The land of Id” series, a body of work funded by the Ontario Arts Council. However, the three-week residency period was not at all sufficient to bring these oil paintings to completion, therefore I continued working on them while in Gallery A. It was also my intention to experiment with mechanical flip-book animations, but lack of time has prevented me from doing so.

RMG: Can you please tell us a bit about your exhibition The Land of Id, on view in Gallery A?

“The land of Id” continues my discourse on human behaviour, focusing on our misguided relationship with the natural environment. In a nutshell, It looks at issues of land exploitation and its repercussions. For more information, please visit https://rmg.on.ca/gallery-a-toni-hamel.php.

RMG: What inspires you? Is there a particular artist’s work that has influenced your practice?

TH: Life inspires me – if not my own, then it’ll be that of others. I am unfortunately a news-junkie and also watch too many documentaries. I find it important for an artist to be knowledgeable and well-versed in the issues of the day, as I feel that Art must bear witness. I deal with the culture of my time, trying to raise awareness about particularly pressing topics which I feel are deserving of attention. ‘The land of Id’ is just an example of that.

There are many artists that have influenced my work or admire greatly. From contemporary figures like Victor Mann, Adrian Ghenie and Michael Borremans, to historical figures like Velasquez and Goya. I am attracted to works that have something to say, rich in content and meaning. I’m definitely not interested in ‘pretty images’ or ‘decor art’.

Image: Toni Hamel

The artists acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council for this exhibition.

Toni Hamel’s new series, The land of Id

This post is by Heather Bulman, a public relations student at Durham College and the RMG’s current Communications Intern.

Toni Hamel was drawn to art very early in life. She remembers creating her first sculptures from the clay brought up from the ground after her parents added a well to the backyard of their Italian home. To this day, Hamel keeps the earliest evidence of her true passion – a photograph from kindergarten with a few drawings on the back.

In Italy, Hamel fought to pursue an education in the arts. Finally, in 1983, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the Academy of Fine Art in Lecce. However, after moving to Canada, she found it difficult to find a job with a degree in fine arts. Hamel took advantage of the dawn of technology by studying computer graphics at Sheridan College. As one of the few women working in technology at the time, she went on to have a very successful career as an interactive media developer and instructor at the University of Toronto. Despite her successes, Hamel grew tired of her career and, with the support of her husband, decided to return to her true passion. Since 2007, she has focused her creative efforts solely on her art. Although she incorporates many mediums into her pieces, she works mostly with graphite.

Toni Hamel painting in the Art Lab

“I started as a painter, but then I got tired of colour. Colour distracts me,” says Hamel. “To me, it’s like decoration. In the work I have evolved to, there is no place for decoration – it’s about the essence. I extract everything else. In doing so, I arrived at drawings. Drawings don’t have contextual information, just the central message. I don’t produce images, I produce content.”

Beginning February 4, she will have the opportunity to create new content as the second artist in residency at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (RMG) in Oshawa, Ont. In the galley’s Art Lab, attached to the recently opened Gallery A, Hamel will have the space to reflect on humans’ relationship with the environment in her new series, The land of Id. This subject matter will complement a current exhibition in the RMG, Running on Empty, while exploring different formats.

Hamel’s experiences in Italy have inspired her to explore powerful topics such as social and political issues. She believes artists have a responsibility to raise awareness about important topics and share their experiences.

“It is difficult for artists to get the general community interested in the arts,” explains Hamel. “When I was growing up in Italy, there were no galleries that offered art classes to a variety of generations, like the Station Gallery or the RMG. Gallery A gives the artists the opportunity to develop new pieces while sharing and engaging with the community.”

For this artist, it’s all about sharing a message. Hamel often uses humour and satire to explore controversial topics. While she admits that reality can be offensive sometimes, she also finds it challenging to find the right balance. As her work has evolved, Hamel has learned that sometimes she can say more with a whisper than a shout.

Toni Hamel’s exhibition The land of Id runs in Gallery A from March 3 to 29. Image by Toni Hamel.

Curator’s View: Jack Bush and Jock Macdonald

This blog post comes from the desk of Senior Curator, Linda Jansma.

This is an unprecedented time in the history of Painters Eleven. Two of its members, Jack Bush and Jock Macdonald are simultaneously having major retrospective exhibitions. Jock Macdonald: Evolving Form, which debuted at the Vancouver Art Gallery last fall and has now just opened at the RMG runs concurrently with Jack Bush, an exhibition organized by and featured at the National Gallery of Canada.

Image Credit: Jock Macdonald in Nootka Sound, c. 1935-36, Vancouver Art Gallery Archives

As a co-curator of the Macdonald exhibition, I have been immersed in the project for three years and yesterday’s final touches on the installation were a satisfying experience. I’d seen the exhibition installation in Vancouver, and ours, because of the spaces we’re using, looks quite different. It’s interesting to see how work changes dependent on the height of galleries or the juxtaposition with different work—it’s the stuff that keeps curating fresh for me.

The experience I had with the Jack Bush exhibition was completely different. Two RMG works were included in the show and one of its principal curators, Sarah Stanners spent a good deal of time in our vault and with our archives. But that was extent of my knowledge of the exhibition.

The painting to greet visitors on entering the exhibition is a majestic sash painting—indeed, the entire first part of the exhibition concentrates on work that Bush did after 1961. These are paintings to which his international reputation is attributed. A room of his 1950s abstract expressionist work is one in which I felt particularly comfortable. He produced these paintings when he was a member of P11 and while they might not be considered as accomplished as his later work, I love the energy that spills from them. The majesty of these later works cannot however, be denied: expansive areas of colour, the brush strokes, unlike many other colour field painters, he allows his audience to see, as well as many of the works’ expansive sizes that envelope you when standing in front of them make for an incredible experience.

Portrait of Jack Bush at Park Gallery, 1958, The New Studio Photography, Gift of the Feheley Family, 2013

There are interesting similarities to the Bush and Macdonald stories. The NGC retrospective highlights the importance of Bush’s relationship with New York critic Clement Greenberg (although puts to rest the myth that Greenberg all but guided Bush’s brush), while the Macdonald exhibition shines a light on the relationship he had with British Surrealists Dr. Grace Pailthorpe and Reuben Mednikoff. The Bush family gave unprecedented access to their father’s diaries giving a personal voice to the project. The Macdonald project saw the inclusion of both a previously unknown diary that he kept while roughing it with his family in Nootka Sound, as well as close to forty letters that he’d written to his mentors Pailthorpe and Mednikoff. These primary sources have enriched both projects.

As a curator who has worked with a collection by members of Painters Eleven for many years, seeing both of these exhibitions is particularly satisfying for me. It also makes me realize how much has yet to be done: as a start, Ray Mead or Walter Yarwood retrospectives anyone?

The Curator’s View: Louis de Niverville visits the RMG

This blog post comes from the desk of Senior Curator, Linda Jansma.

To say that I was remiss in not taking a notebook and pencil along is an understatement.

Louis de Niverville looking at his work Madame Takes a Bath #1

The artist Louis de Niverville came to visit the RMG a couple of weeks ago with friends. Jason, our Preparator, and I had taken some time in the morning to open the vault racks and pull out solander boxes that housed some of his works on paper in order to make viewing the fourteen works from our collection as easy as possible. Louis was absolutely charming, examining each work like it was a long lost relative—and his memory was remarkable. We stood in front of Mother and Child, a painting of what I’d always thought of as an imposing woman holding a crying baby. I knew the child was a two-month old Louis and knew that he had painted the work from a 1933 photograph. I’d always assumed that the woman was quite stern as she sat so monumentally within the picture frame. Not at all. In fact, Louis’s mother was a gentle woman with many children who constantly worked to keep the family organized. Louis’ reminiscences made me re-think a painting I’ve known for many years.

Louis de Niverville Mother and Child 1970
oil on canvas 183.1 x 91.5 cm Purchase, 1977

Louis recalled the technique he used for his multi-media works and let us know that the beautiful and delicate Untitled print from 1979 was the first print he’d ever produced and how he used a spray gun to develop his technique. There were other notes to add tohis files: Still Life with Abundance #2 was one of four large collage works representing the seasons, and Mother and Child from 1970 was the last oil on canvas painting that he completed; he also gave us more detailed comments on the medium he used forhis collage works. All of this information is not only useful for RMG staff, but also for researchers who come to access our collection.

Louis de Niverville Untitled 1979
lithograph on paper
46.1 x 55.0 cm
Gift of Peter and Susan Swann, 1994

While Louis was incredibly grateful for the tour of his work, in reality, the pleasure was all ours. What a privilege to a have such a respected Canadian artist tour us through our collection of his work!

Louis de Niverville and Senior Curator Linda Jansma examine Sunset Farm #3