Art Articles & Reviews

} Big Sky Country Victoria Times Colonist, March 15, 2002 Prairie-born artist Terry Fenton turns his brush on the wide horizons of rural Saskatchewan "I love the way the paper takes the oil." Morning sunlight streamed into the room. Terry Fenton had just laid down a sheaf of his oil on-paper paintings on the broadloom of this hilltop condo in Victoria He's here from Saskatoon preparing for his exhibition, which just opened at The Old School House in Qualicum, Beach and runs until March 30. Fenton fends off the inevitable question about oil paint on paper -- that it isn't sound practice. "The conservators are of mixed minds," he offers, "but paper is much more stable than the cotton duck most artists use for canvas these days. And the oil paint actually helps protect the paper." Corot, Vuillard, Constable -- they all painted with oil on paper and those paintings are often in better condition than their canvases." Fenton's oil paints aren't very oily. He blends colours with the softness of pastel: views of the big prairie sky created with cobalt blue, turquoise, lavender, peach and soft fresh green. Darker clouds roil with internal energy and electric power, colours merged into mixed tints without name. Low horizons and the changeable colours of a prairie sky highlight Terry Fenton's Work Actually, Terry Fenton is much better known as an art administrator. He spent his career as a capable and committed director of institutions that promoted Modern Art, back when that meant abstract painting. He's also a prairie boy, who fondly recalls Laura Lamont, the lady who taught him art when he was 12. Later, at Regina College in 1958 and 1959, he was taught by Roy Kiyooka, Ron Bloore and Art McKay. Those energetic western artists were, at that moment just about to be knocked sideways. In 1959 Barnett Newman came from New York to lead the artists workshop at Emma Lake. He delivered a jolt of up-to-the-minute energy to Saskatchewan. (Newman, by the way, painted the National Gallery's famous Voice of Fire...)' Fenton saw the effect on his teachers: "It was like some revelation had occurred," he recalled. "From that point they became ambitious, outward-looking and confident." A few years later Fenton was hired by Ron Bloore, then director of the Norman McKenzie Art Gallery in Regina. There, in 1962, young Fenton found himself playing host and tour guide to a visiting art critic. Clement Greenberg came to jury an exhibition for the Saskatchewan Arts Board and for three days. Fenton squired him around the City. Greenberg was then becoming the most important interpreter of art in America, and Fenton found him "enormously gracious. He loved people grilling him, young people who were on the attack." Those visits left an indelible mark on the art of Saskatchewan, and on Fenton. At the age of 32, he was called to the directorship of the Edmonton Art Gallery, probably the most important posting of his life. During the next 16 years Fenton and his' staff put the gallery on the map as a test site for modernism. "The first 10 years were really good," Fenton reminisced. "We had a lot of freedom, a fair bit of money and didn't have to worry about Canadian art with capital C. This started changing in the early 1980s. From then on, the Canada Council micro-managed art in Canada, and in the process destroyed the curatorial structure of the country. Leaving the Edmonton Art Gallery in 1988, Fenton developed a program for landscape painters at the spectacular Leighton Foundation property in the Alberta foothills. There, his own painting was encouraged and life was rich. In 1993 he became director of the Mendel Gallery in Saskatoon, but left after four years. "Now," he said, "I support myself." And thus, we have the Terry Fenton art show in Qualicum Beach. The paintings are on loan from the Winchester Gallery in Victoria, and Fenton also shows with Virginia Christopher in Calgary, Bugera-Kmet in Edmonton, Assiniboia in Regina and with Art Placement in Saskatoon. Modestly, he mentions galleries in New York and Houston that carry his paintings. Getting back to those paintings. . . . Many share the same composition -- big sky, low horizon, no foreground. Stripping out the anecdotal subject matter has left him lots of room for expressive play in the skyscape. "Saskatchewan is the province which is richest in colour," he says in a rush of conviction. "More than even Alberta. The light in the dry atmosphere, the variety of vegetation. . . I love the way the brilliant sky changes colour. It's all colour; colour is the thing. What really affects expression in art is colour. It's the hardest to teach and hardest to learn. Colour makes pictures work. I want to make pictures that really come off the wall at you, really grab you." Painting these changeable skies, he achieves a gratifying tension of push and pull on the picture plane -- good modernist stuff. But these are actually old-fashioned landscape paintings: illusionistic, impressionist scenes. "I use colour to create the illusion of light, of atmosphere," Fenton concludes. He grounds that illusion with a level horizon, perhaps some telephone poles and the occasional grain elevator. It's not everyone's idea of paradise, but I believe there are people in Qualicum Beach who know what a quarter section is and wouldn't mind owning a picture of one. ___________________________________________________ You can see more of Terry Fenton's artwork on his website: www.sharecom.ca/fenton Copyright © 2002 Robert Amos Robert Amos is an artist and art writer who lives in Victoria, B. C.. He can be contacted by e-mail and you can view his paintings at www.robertamos.com