John Kinsella’s trees are witness to the passage of time
SENTINELS NOW ON EXHIBIT AT THE FOCUS GALLERY
“I
AM AIMING for a sense of being out on the edge, shaking hands with the unknown, the mystery, the vastness and power of nature.”
That, John Kinsella says, is why he painted “Sentinels V, Island Pines,” one of his most recent landscapes.
The composition is clear and calm. A vast horizontal body of water and sky is linked by a vertical cluster of pines growing on a tiny rocky island. A sliver of moon hangs in the sky, central to the composition, but barely visible.
“The island pines are like sentinels, silent witnesses to the passage of time,” Kinsella tells me.
The Hamilton native loves the landscape of Ontario, but he’s not out to impress anyone with meticulous reproductions of any specific sites. His landscapes, painted in a loosely representational style, embody memories and personal experiences.
“This painting was inspired by my experiences fishing in a boat on many lakes in Ontario, not one specific lake or island,” he says. “It is more an idea of a place than any one place in particular.”
His landscapes are on show in Sentinels, an exhibition at The Focus Gallery.
Kinsella, 55, has been exhibiting for more than 30 years. In the 1980s, he helped found The Contemporaries, a group of Hamilton artists who painted and exhibited together.
He’s painted the human figure, but landscape is his passion now.
“When I was young, my father had regularly taken our family camping in Algonquin Park,” he says. “I would say that camping actually introduced me to art.
“My earliest memories of art were the paintings of The Group of Seven and particularly Tom Thomson’s Algonquin Park paintings. I could understand those paintings because they related directly to my life experience.”
In “Canoe Lake (Ode to Tom)” Kinsella recreates the place where Thomson died.
“I painted this for an exhibition I had in Algonquin Park,” he recalls. “The exhibition opened the day after a full moon in July, six days before the anniversary of Tom Thomson’s death.”
Large expanses of water and sky dominate the composition, separated only by thin strips of land on the right. Four trees stand guard on the body of land closest to us.
Kinsella lets the moon illuminate the right side. He does this by adding slivers of yellow paint to the tops of the two strips of land and dabs of yellow to the water.
“Although I am inspired by Tom Thomson, I do not copy him. I want to take my own fresh approach to landscape painting and make a connection with a contemporary audience.”
There are no human figures in Kinsella’s landscapes. But in “Hunter’s Moon, Ancaster,” two dogs stand in the centre foreground.
“One of my friends from high school lived in farm house in Ancaster,” Kinsella says. “It was off one of the concession roads, out in the country.
“She had two dogs and we spent many hours exploring the farmer’s field behind her house. The dogs would accompany us, rooting and smelling their way around the property.
“Every once in a while, one of the dogs would stand at attention, ears and nose up. This usually meant someone had arrived home from work.”
The dogs are flanked by tall stalks of vegetation realized in small brush strokes that include red and orange. Houses and trees lie in the distance under wide streaks of blue and orange sky.
“The painting was inspired by a strong memory of being in the country around harvest time,” Kinsella explains. “The smells, the colours and the openness of the space all made an impact on me.”
Regina Haggo is giving an illustrated talk, A Tale of Two Claudes, looking at how Impressionist painter Claude Monet revolutionized the traditional landscapes exemplified by Claude Lorrain. It takes place at the Carnegie Gallery, 10 King St. W., Dundas, on Tuesday, Nov. 14, starting at 7 p.m. For more, phone 905-627-4265.