Art Articles & Reviews

} Toni Onley By Robert Amos Until his recent death in an airplane mishap, Toni Onley was perhaps the most public artist in this province. Everyone here recognizes his name and most people know at least part of his story. His career was long and his output prolific. Onley was news. A short man, his exploits seemed larger than life. He faced down the government and threatened to burn his inventory when the taxation department persisted in trying to tax his paintings before they were sold. When he crashed his plane for the first time, it came to rest suspended by its wingtips over a glacier crevasse. Onley was the first artist in our region to drive a Rolls Royce. It was possible to resent this fame - after all, he made paintings that looked easy. He was known for his small watercolours, horizontal in format, featuring distant elements of the landscape. When circumstances were right, he could paint three in an afternoon. Thousands of these watercolours were painted “on the spot”, their locations and dates noted in the lower margin. In the course of reviewing many of his shows, I too have at times been tempted to discount his achievements. I’ve tried to reduce what he did to a formula. But, let me assure you, after careful and repeated examinations, I have found Onley’s paintings brilliantly crafted and perennially surprising. Furthermore, I have never before seen such a fine selection of Onley’s paintings as this memorial retrospective. It was “hand picked” by Gunter Heinrich, Onley’s longtime dealer and now the agent of his artistic estate. Heinrich has been given a free hand. Surveying just about everything not already sold, he has brought out a “greatest hits” collection spanning the length and breadth of Onley’s career. Thanks to the publication last year of Onley’s biography, Flying Colours (Gregory Strong, Harbour Publishing), we are able to view his many phases in sequence and context. Onley was born in 1928 on the Isle of Man. By the time he emigrated to Canada in 1948 his destiny as an artist was already formed. The earliest of the 93 items in this show is an oil from 1958. Entirely abstract, it is a souvenir of his artistic evolution at San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. Nothing of Onley’s Polar Series from 1962 is available. Those works, assembled from torn fragments of painted canvas, have become sought-after in the auction sale rooms. But Winchester Gallery is deeply committed to abstraction. A number orf small, white Onley panels from 1964 bear only the slightest markings yet even today their austere minimalism has the power to shock. Onley’s early years were studded with honours, prizes and grants. In 1978 a retrospective of his work was presented by the Vancouver Art Gallery, including 314 works! It seems paradoxical that at that point, when his work had been collected by the Tate Gallery in London, the National Gallery of Canada and the Library of Congress in Washington, he would change his style. After 1980 his works were generally small in scale and representational rather than abstract. Predominantly the current show presents the later watercolours, 46 in all. With many hundred to choose from, Heinrich has selected pieces each of which is dramatic, incisive and appealing. A few have strong foreground elements - a fence, a cabin, a stand of trees in stark silhouette. Always evident is Onley’s uncanny brush play. He can draw our attention from a windblown mountain ridge down the sunny glacier slope to meltwater in a pool below - all in a single brush stroke. His dramatic and ambiguous skyscapes never relax into a formula. The British watercolour landscape tradition was reborn in Onley: topographic subjects, transparent watercolours, and a romantic mood. Like a true Victorian adventurer, he painted the Arctic, Japan, India, Georgian Bay and, in profusion, views of his beloved West Coast. Winchester is particularly intersted in Onley’s oils. Of the 15 on show, most are paintings derived from his favourite sketches. Heinrich says there were very few oils left in the studio, a fact which attests to their popularity. Onley’s considerable skills were constantly honed back in his studio. His distintive italic handwriting was just one facet of his interest in Chinese and Japanese brushwork. The practice of this artform entails considerable “waste” of paper. Onley had the utmost respect for the fine materials he chose and thus elements for collage were abundant. He pasted down fragments of journals, written characters and the odd attractive brushstroke, leaving a playful record of his concerns beyond the landscape. Winchester has kept the prices of this show in line with Onley’s last exhibit there. And considering the quantity of work on hand, I don’t expect his prices will immediately skyrocket. Frankly I think he’d want it that way. Onley was a populist. His oils, watercolours, collages, etchings, screen prints, posters, books and cards will long continue to take his vision to the people. ___________________________________________ Copyright © 2004Robert 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