Bob Grant

My family was more interested in music than in painting, but I do remember one specific painting which meant a lot to me growing up. It was a colourful print of a woman who I always thought looked a bit like my mother (actually a lot like my mother). That’s probably why my father bought the print in the first place. It was of a seated woman with her legs pulled up, with a long graceful neck and a beautiful but severe head, with twinkling star-shaped eyes and high cheekbones This portrait obviously looked like the sitter, but it was clearly not realistic. It was a Picasso*.

 

During my teen years I did a lot of drawing, liked music a great deal, and tried to paint (unsuccessfully). I was interested in surrealism and album cover art. This was my counter-culture artistic expression phase.

 

In Perth, Ontario, where I went to high school, I had the opportunity to visit the studio of a schoolfriend’s mother, Dorothy Renals. Renals was a talented symbolist painter, working in egg tempera in a wonderful realistic but imaginative style. Her large studio included all kinds of finished and unfinished artworks, pots of paint, rows of brushes and all the other fetishistic materials associated with a professional artist’s studio. Seeing such a mysterious environment, late at night, was a revelation and I have to say, life changing.

 

I studied fine arts for four years at Carleton – painting, sculpture, architecture and art history. I learned a great deal. I realized I wasn’t a genius.

 

While at university, my wife–to-be Jean and I visited the Henry Moore Galleries at the AGO in Toronto. At the time Henry Moore was a personal favourite for both of us. It remains a vivid memory for me; seeing all his work, big and small pieces, all in one place. In that large gallery space I felt like I was in church or in a sacred precinct, in the holy of holies. I should have got married there.

 

After university I continued taking art courses and contributed some graphic artwork to a local arts and literary monthly magazine called Focus. It was nice to see my work among that of poets, writers and other creative people.

 

I began a series of very large format panel paintings (4’x6’) on a variety of mythological and literary themes - my homage to all the great mural painters of art history. This was my overweening hubris phase, thankfully short-lived. These works are now resting quietly in a storage locker somewhere, safely away from any art lover's critical gaze.

 

I returned to more conventional sized easel paintings. Later, I, my wife (who is also a painter) and some friends, established The Loaded Brush Studio and organized a few group shows. It was great experience hearing feedback from the others about my current work and going public with what I'd created.

 

I studied Tibetan Buddhism and some other Asian traditions throughout these years, and Buddhist themes and imagery remain in many of my paintings. I like taking some liberty with these time-honoured forms and putting my own personal stamp on them. It seems to have worked out well.

 

And now I have a website showcasing a lot of my greatest hits and misses from these many years. I sometimes wonder, can you can have a real identity these days without having a virtual one? Probably not.

 

Hope you enjoy my work.

 

*Portrait of Jacqueline Roche (1952-53)