"Ken Lochhead: A Celebration of Colour"
2008-09-02 until 2008-09-27
Ottawa Art Gallery
Ottawa, ON, CA Canada

Ken Lochhead: A Celebration of Colour, featured from September 2 until 27, 2008 at Ottawa Art Gallery is an exuberant reflection of Kenneth Lochhead's life-long love affair with colour, representing over three decades of work. Colour floats on the surface of his spray paintings of the early 1970s, and is the major structural component of playful birds which date from the late 1970s. Abstract enamels of the 1980s display colour laid on with either a scraper blade or a brush, while landscapes of the later years show works saturated with hue. "I like to paint, and I believe in the celebration of life. Through painting I find some love and joy. It is all worthwhile." - Kenneth Lochhead

Born in Ottawa in 1926, Lochhead studied art at Queen's University, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania. He was the Director of the University of Saskatchewan School of Art from1950 to 1964, and initiated the Emma Lake Artists' Workshop in 1955. Lochhead was also one of the famous Regina Five, a group of painters who first exhibited together in the exhibition Five Painters from Saskatchewan, organized by the National Gallery of Canada (1961). After leaving Regina, Lochhead continued to teach painting and drawing at the University of Manitoba, York University, and the University of Ottawa until his retirement from teaching in 1989.

From 1953 to 2006, Lochhead participated in over 300 national and international exhibitions and received over 18 major Canadian and international art commissions. In 2005, the MacKenzie Art Gallery marked Saskatchewan's Centennial with a sixty-year retrospective of Lochhead's work, and celebrated the art, teaching and vision of this man who helped to establish contemporary art in Canada. He was honoured with the Order of Canada in 1971, an Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Regina in 2001, and the Governor-General's Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2006. Kenneth Lochhead worked in his studio as a full-time painter until his death in 2006.

IMAGE
Kenneth Lochhead,
Untitled 1993,
watercolour on paper

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