Saturday, February 27, 2010

Portrait of a Prairie Artist

Illingworth Holey Kerr, born on August 20, 1905 in Lumsden, was one of William Hugh and Florence (nee Nurse) Kerr’s four children. As a child he loved animals and started to draw them at an early age. His mother, who enjoyed watercolour painting, encouraged his art. At 14 he won several awards for work he entered in the Regina Exhibition.

At 18, Illingworth enrolled at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. It was here that he met painters like Arthur Lismer, Frederick Varley, J.E.H. MacDonald and William Beatty. The early influence of the Group of Seven was evident throughout his life as an artist.

After college he returned home to Lumsden and rented a studio above the pool hall. It is believed that in addition to working on harvest crews and for the railway, he also operated a trapline to earn money so he could continue to paint. Between 1930 and 1935 Illingworth created some of his most famous prairie works including When Winter Comes; Western Theatre; Flood, Lumsden; Straw Stacks; and March Thaw. In 1936 he burned much of his early work and set off for England to work in the film industry enrolling in the Westminster School of Art in London, England.

Illingworth met Mary Spice from Yorkton and married in 1938. They honeymooned in Paris before settling Montreal where he began to work with other Canadian artists on a project for the World’s Fair in New York. 1939 saw the couple return to Lumsden where Illingworth was invited to have his first retrospective (an exhibition of a representative selection of an artist's life work) in 1940 at the Regina College Gallery. Between 1940 and 1945 the couple moved to British Columbia where they lived in White Rock, Cultus Lake and Vancouver. Illingworth joined the British Columbia Society of Artists and the Federation of Canadian Artists, which, at that time, was chaired by another famous Group of Seven artist, Lawren Harris.

In 1946 Illingworth wrote and illustrated a book of short stories about the Qu'Appelle Valley entitled, Gay Dogs and Dark Horses which was short-listed for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. In the same year his teaching career began as he took a position at the Vancouver School of Art. In 1947, the Kerr’s headed for Calgary where Illingworth would spend the next 20 years as the Head of the Art Department at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art, later known as the Alberta College of Art. Illingworth retired from the Alberta College of Art in 1967. His autobiography, "Paint and Circumstance" was published in 1987. On January 6, 1989, Dr. Illingworth Holey (Buck) Kerr passed away. The Alberta College of Art Gallery was renamed the Illingworth Kerr Gallery in September, 1990, to commemorate the artist lifelong legacy of art.

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