Peter Bell was a British-born Canadian artist, curator and art critic. Born in Lincolnshire, England, in 1918, he served with the British Armed Forces in the Second World War. It was during this period that he met many artists and was inspired to paint. After the war, he moved to South Africa where he studied architecture at Cape Town University and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. After graduating, Bell taught at the Ndaleni Art School in Natal, South Africa, becoming the head of the institution in 1959. Following his arrest for anti-apartheid activities, he moved his family to St. John's Newfoundland, where he taught art at Memorial University and was the curator of the university’s art gallery (now The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery). In 1972, he resigned from his position to become Memorial University’s Artist-in-Residence and devote more time to his art practice. From 1973 to 1980, Bell was the official visual arts critic for the Evening Telegraph newspaper. He was known for his knowledge of art and his frank honesty.
Bell’s work is notable for deriving its inspiration from botany and the exotic plants in his greenhouses rather than from the rugged landscape of The Rock. Bell exhibited extensively during his lifetime, with shows across Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom. His work is held in private and public collections around the world, including the National Gallery of Cape Town in South Africa, the Canada Council Art Bank and The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery. Bell moved to Scotland with his wife, artist Charlotte Macnee and lived there until his death in 2015 at age 97.
SOURCE:
https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/arts/peter-bell.php
Philip Iverson was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick in 1965 and was recognized as having a unique gift at an early age. His formal training began at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design and he decided to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Mount Allison University in 1990.
During the 1990s, Iverson taught painting at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design and served as president of the Board of Gallery Connexion (now Connexion ARC). Iverson was an Artist-in-Residence at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in 1991 and received several grants from the Province of New Brunswick in support of his work. In 2001 he moved to Montreal, Quebec where he taught painting and art history at the Saidye Bronfman Centre (now the Segal Centre for the Performing Arts).
Iverson was influenced by the work of German Expressionists like Oskar Kokoschka and Max Beckman and the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock. Iverson’s expressionist portraits often channeled the artist’s own sense of alienation and frustration as a person challenged with living with severe epilepsy. His work tends to be large and irregularly shaped, made from layers of plywood that he gouged and built up with thick impasto and intense colour.
He has exhibited throughout the Maritimes including The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the UNB Art Centre, Galerie Sans Nom, Galerie d’art Université de Moncton and numerous commercial galleries throughout the Maritimes. Iverson’s work is held in public and private collections including the McCain Collection, and the Imperial Oil Company, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the NB Art Bank as well as Leo Hayes High School in Fredericton. The work presented in this exhibition was from Tempting Fate, exhibited at the UNB Art Centre in 1997. Philip Iverson passed away from brain cancer in 2006 at the age of 41.
SOURCES:
http://www.philipiverson.com/liter.html
https://www.gallery78.com/artists/philip-iverson
Dale MacMullin is a Fredericton-based painter and printmaker. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Mount Allison University in 1986 and a Bachelor of Education from the University of New Brunswick, winning the Tom Acheson Prize in Art Education in 1991. MacMillan has also won the Elisabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant for his artwork. The themes of MacMullin’s work have shifted dramatically since the early works found in the UNB Permanent Collection. He is currently a member of the CAAA (Canadian Aerospace Artists Association, an organization dedicated to promoting aviation-based art in Canada, and continues to paint with the traditional medium of egg tempera. MacMullin has exhibited his work in a number of private and public galleries in the region and continues to exhibit with the CAAA.
SOURCE:
http://www.aviationartists.ca/Galleriesmainnew.htm
Chantal Khoury is an emerging Canadian artist of Lebanese descent born in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She graduated from Concordia University completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction in 2012 and is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate at the University of Guelph.
Primarily a painter, she explores contemporary portraiture and landscape, with an expressive brush and a vibrant palette. Her first solo exhibit Unstilled Egos was held at the UNB Art Centre in 2014. In these works, she was inspired by images found in fashion magazines and explored the relationship of beauty, identity, and the absurd. The work purchased from that exhibition is featured in this release of Revelations. She has shown in a number of group exhibitions in both Fredericton and Montreal.
More recently, Khoury has begun to explore the Lebanese diaspora through depictions of the Canadian landscape. In 2018, she participated in Once upon Water, an artist residency at Gibralter Point on Toronto Island. Her work was featured in an exhibit at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in 2019.
SOURCES:
https://www.galleryonqueen.com/chantal-khoury
http://beaverbrookartgallery.org/en/visit/exhibitions/chantal-khoury/
https://onceuponwater.com/chantal-khoury/
Paul Mathieson is a Canadian painter who was born in the United Kingdom in 1949. He earned a Bachelor of Arts and Education (with first-class honours) from the University of Nottingham, and a Master of Arts and Education from the University of London. Mathieson exhibited his work while living in England and managed the Lane Art Gallery in Bradford from 1968 to 1970. He moved to New Brunswick with his family in 1975 and was an art teacher at Simonds High School in Saint John until his retirement in 2006. In 1990, Mathieson was one of twelve Canadian artists invited to exhibit at the El Mes de la Cultura in Havana, Cuba. He has been influenced by the painters of the 20th century such as Manet, Picasso, R.B. Kitaj, and Eric Fischl. Mathieson paints modern cityscapes, investigating the complexities of urban life with wit and a keen eye for the absurd.
Mathieson was shortlisted for the prestigious Strathbutler Award in 2009 and would finally be presented with the award in 2015 at a gala hosted by the New Brunswick Museum. He has exhibited at the New Brunswick Museum, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the UNB Art Centre, Gallery Connexion (now Connexion ARC) and Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre as well as in commercial galleries in Fredericton and Saint John.
Mathieson’s works can be found in private and public collections across the United States, Argentina, China, Cuba, South Africa, France, Holland and the United Kingdom including here in New Brunswick at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the University of New Brunswick, and the NB Art Bank.
SOURCES:
https://www.bucklandmerrifield.com/artists-pages/mathieson/
http://www.paulmathieson.com/bio.htm
https://sheilahughmackay.ca/2015/06/05/paul-mathieson-named-newest-strathbutler-artist/
Katie FitzRandolph is a Canadian artist and teacher living and working in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She was inspired to paint at an early age and credits her aunt Lucy Jarvis, Fredericton’s famed artist and one of the founders of the UNB Art Centre, with igniting this spark. FitzRandolph studied oil painting at the Central Technical School in Toronto, and watercolour painting in France and Mexico. She also studied pottery in Regina, Saskatchewan and her work has been included in three international juried exhibitions in Italy, and at the National Gallery of Art. She is currently a member of Toronto’s Central Connection, an artist collective founded in 1990, and has participated in a number of the group’s exhibitions.
FitzRandolph was one of the founding members of the Fredericton Arts Alliance (established in 1999), which has played a vital role in Fredericton’s arts community. She serves as an executive member and has been elected President for several terms. She is one of the chief organizers of the FAA Gala which raises funds through an evening of music and art to support a range of programs including Artists in the Schools, the Casemates Artist’s Residency, Art off the Streets, the Provincial Election Forum, and the production of the FAA newsletter which is one of the most important tools of arts communication in the city.
She currently maintains a studio at the Charlotte Street Arts Centre where she teaches painting for the University of New Brunswick’s College of Extended Learning and is also a participant in the not-for-profit community group, Greater Fredericton Social Innovation. The work exhibited in Revelations was purchased from the Voice of Women juried exhibition in 2009.
SOURCE:
https://www.unb.ca/cel/enrichment/leisure-learning/fredericton/watercolour-journals.html
Greg Charlton a Fredericton-based visual artist who is a painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. Born in Belleville, Ontario. He began making sculpture and assemblages as a young teen. He began his studies in Visual Arts at St. Lawrence College in Cornwall, ON then studied photography and sculpture at OCAD (now the Ontario College of Art and Design University) where he won a Scholarship Award for Sculpture. He graduated in 1985 and then in 2015 he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from that same institution. While in Toronto, he worked at the Art Gallery of Ontario teaching at the Anne Tanenbaum Gallery School and then as a Preparator in the Department of Exhibitions and Collections. He was the Chief Preparator at The Beaverbrook Art Gallery from 1999-2014.
Charlton has received awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and Artsnb. His work can be found in private collections in New York and Toronto as well as locally. His work is also in the public collections of the Canada Council Art Bank, NB Art Bank, the University of New Brunswick, and The Beaverbrook Art Gallery.
Charlton has had solo exhibitions in Toronto and in Fredericton and group exhibitions in Ontario as well as at The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, The Andrew and Laura McCain Art Gallery in Florenceville, NB and at the George Fry Gallery at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design.
In 2013, Charlton’s large project, titled Vortiscope: Camera Obscura, was installed in downtown Eastport, Maine, as part of a public art exhibition at the Tides Institute and Museum of Art. It was also installed on The Green in Fredericton as part of The Beaverbrook Art Gallery’s exhibit Goiung with the Wind (2012) and Wolastoq (Beautiful River) in 2010. Charlton is currently an instructor in Visual Foundation Arts at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design in Fredericton.
SOURCES:
https://www.galleryonqueen.com/greg-charlton
https://www.welcomenb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Departments/thc-tpc/pdf/Culture/MaineNBPhase3Report.pdf
https://nbccd.ca/about/faculty-staff/greg-charlton/
Though born in Montreal, Brigid Toole Grant grew up in Fredericton, New Brunswick. More specifically, she grew up in residence at the University of New Brunswick where her father taught chemistry. Toole Hall at UNB is named for her father, Dr. Frank J. Toole, who by the 1950s had become the Dean of Chemistry. The Tooles were a prominent New Brunswick family, well-educated and civically engaged, they were known for their significant contributions to arts and science in the province.
As a child, Brigid was very influenced by the artists associated with the early days of the UNB Art Centre, in particular Lucy Jarvis, Alfred Pinsky, Fritz Brandtner, and later Bruno and Molly Bobak. She continued her artistic training at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the l'École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Montreal. As a student she was a member of the Art Student League in New York and the City and Guilds School in London, UK. She also studied at the University of New Brunswick where she received a BA in 1961.
Brigid Toole Grant is a versatile artist with a keen appreciation for the landscapes, faces and interiors of her adopted province. In addition, she brings a social conscience to many of the subjects she portrays. Her drawings, watercolours, paintings, and in particular her woodcuts, show the influence of her early association with the artists of the UNB Art Centre.
As well as a talented artist, Brigid Toole Grant is a respected teacher who has given workshops across the country, has taught at the University of New Brunswick’s Department of Extension and also offered painting courses in its latest iteration as the College of Extended Learning. For many years she taught at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design and also with Molly Lamb Bobak at Sunbury Shores and Nature Centre in St. Andrews, NB.
Brigid Toole Grant has been a continuing advocate for arts and education; she is a member of the Raging Grannies, she serves as a national board member of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and has authored multiple articles in the media, such as the NB Media Co-op and Arts Atlantic.
The work included in this episode of Revelations was first exhibited in the Kospaney exhibit at Gallery Connexion (now Connexion ARC) in 1991.
SOURCES:
https://www.gallery78.com/artists/brigid-toole-grant
https://unbhistory.lib.unb.ca/Toole_Hall
Peter Bell
Gold Fish Pond, No. 2, 1972
Oil on Masonite
120.2 X 19.3 cm
Philip Iverson
Man with Snake, 1996
Oil on plywood
122.0 X 91.4 cm
Dale MacMullin
Black (W)hole No. 1
Mixed media on paper
64.0 X 39.0 cm
Dale MacMullin
Red Earth No.1
Mixed media on paper
64.0 X 93.0 cm
Chantal Khoury
Poser, 2014
Oil on canvas
121.9 X 91.4 cm
Paul Mathieson
A Crisist’s Dilemma
Acrylic on canvas
122.0 X 122.0 cm
Greg Charlton
Stags, 1992
Acrylic on canvas
Katie FitzRandolph
Fabulous Landscape, 2008
Oil in canvas
122.0 X 122.0 cm
Brigid Toole-Grant
Second Growth, 1991
Acrylic on Plywood
213.4 X 91.5 cm
*Quote is from the poem by William Wordsworth, The Tables Turned.
