Curated by Nancy Tousley and Peter White
Organized and circulated by the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, Grande Prairie, Alberta
January 28 to March 12, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 11, 3 pm
Rodman Hall Art Centre, 106 St. Paul Crescent, St. Catharines
Admission to the gallery is by donation ($5 suggested)
Gallery Hours: Tues. – Fri. 10 am – 5 pm, Sat. – Sun. 12 pm – 5 pm
HOT TALK: Saturday, February 11, 2 pm
Wayne Morgan and Sharilyn J. Ingram, “Making Art for the Market: Flexhaug in Context”
A Sublime Vernacular offers the first overview of the extraordinary career of Levine Flexhaug (1918-1974), an itinerant painter who sold thousands of variations of essentially the same landscape painting in national parks, resorts, department stores and bars across western Canada from the late 1930s through the early 1960s. Whatever its variation, a Flexhaug image represents a Western icon, a silent unspoiled Eden that encapsulates the conventions of sublime landscape painting in a kind of painter’s shorthand, and offers a point of entry for consideration of significant critical questions ranging from issues of taste, originality versus repetition in art, the appeal of landscape and its iconography.
Image: Levine Flexhaug, Untitled (Mountain lake with deer) (detail), nd. Collection of Wayne Morgan and Sharilyn J. Ingram, Grimsby, Ontario.