Role of Art in my Life

Art has changed my life twice. I wasn’t a star student in primary school so finding something that I was good at was real boost.  And I was lucky.  I was enrolled in a local sculpture class for kids that was taught by a Miss Milne.  It was wonderful and what she taught me things that has stayed with with me for many decades.  Shortly afterwards Eleanor Milne was appointed Dominion Sculptress and she spent the rest of her career working in the Canadian Parliament buildings.  I visited her in her  studio in the basement of the centre block and she took me a tour of the building, the like of which current security would never allow. I am still in awe.

My parents were very supportive. One rainy day they took me to the Mill of Kintail, the studio of R Tait McKenzie, a noted Canadian physician and sculptor. It has been spruced up since, but at the time it was dusty and offered another glimpse into the world of a sculptor. The curator/caretaker took an interest and gave me a large block of modellng clay that Dr McKenzie had made and used. I promptly went home and made an antomically-correct model of a male athlete, much to the consternation of my parents. The clay smelled of linseed oil, and I still dream of it whenever I am poking around an art supply store.

I was also fortunate to have a wonderful art teacher for grades 7 & 8 at W.E.Gowling, and he (whose name eludes me right now) gave me the run of the art room whenever I wanted. I was in there before and after school, and during lunch hour.  Two years of not being bullied!

Unfortunately somebody gave me an I.Q. test and I was sent to an academic-only high school.  While I did the occasional sculpture or painting,  my artistic development was on hold for a long time. It was only in the 1990s when my scientific career was sputtering that I started again, spending many evenings in Ken Clarke’s studio  working from live models.  I also attended a variety of ceramic and sculpture workshops, mostly run by the West Coast Clay Sculpture Association.

About 1995 I started taking courses at the local art college (Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design). However after completing most of the required first year courses and two ceramic technology classes I left to take a sculpture class with noted local sculptor David Robinson at then new Vancouver Academy of Art. There I also met a Paul Chizak who, over the next few years, taught me how to paint in a way I had never encountered before, but which resonated with my sculptural experience. Sculpting with light was freeing and I’ve focused on oil painting ever since. Perhaps as a consequence of doing so much art, my scientific career recovered and my final few years were quite productive. I've alos kept in touch with several classmates and we occasionally share models and travel together.

In 1999 I returned to ECIAD to teach a perception and visual science course to the art students. Trying to make science interesting to fine art students was a challenge but I found it extremely rewarding. They got the one science credit they needed for their BFA, and I got an education in both art, and in science. I miss the preparation and teaching, but not the marking.