PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Vancouver
Canadian Post-War & Contemporary Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 26, 2009, lot 98
Dr. Luigi Rossi, Kelowna and Grande Prairie
Estate of Dr. Luigi Rossi

“I paint because I must.” These words explain the extensive catalogue of work Ted Harrison generated from 1969 until shortly before his death in 2015. His first major exhibition, held in 1971 in Ottawa at the Robertson Gallery, was a sell-out that generated continuous commission requests. Invitations for solo exhibitions from across Canada followed. Most of these shows sold out within hours of the gallery doors opening.

Harrison was born in 1926 in the coal-mining village of Wingate, County Durham, Northern England. While most boys left school at age 15 to work in the mine, Harrison’s parents recognized his affinity for literature, music and above all painting. After grammar school, with a scholarship in hand, he escaped life below ground to study at the West Hartlepool College of Art. He later obtained a teaching degree. Painting, he figured, would be a hobby.

After World War II he was deployed to India and East Africa with the British Army as an intelligence officer. He later took teaching positions in Malaysia and New Zealand, where the vibrant colours and curvilinear style of Maori art influenced his later Yukon style.

After a brief return to England, Harrison, always keen for adventure, emigrated with his wife and young son in 1967 to teach in Wabasca, Alberta. One year later, he accepted a position in Carcross, Yukon, a village two hours south of Whitehorse. It was there, among the challenges of life in the Canadian North, that he found his rhythm as a painter and developed a style that challenged the norms of the day. Carcross, with its tipsy, gaily coloured houses against the backdrop of Montana Mountain, and the people of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation are represented in most of his work.

Harrison’s theme of people going about everyday life echoes the work of Greater Manchester artist L.S. Lowry RBA (1887 – 1976) and County Durham painter Norman Cornish MBE (1919 – 2014). But while Lowry captured the soot-laden streets of industrial Manchester and Cornish the drab daily life of the miner, Harrison’s canvases resonate with tough, resilient people in a vast landscape of swirling skies rendered in strokes of glorious colour.

Harrison’s work is a testament to the influence of place and the power of imagination. Careful observation reveals repeating motifs. In his work we can observe the Maori influence in his spiraling skies, cloisonné outlines and directness. Ever-looming backgrounds of mountains echo the slag heaps of his County Durham village, and the ever-present families are reminders of his formative years. The vibrant colours of Malaysia flooded his palette. Little dogs and ravens relay his affinity for playful creatures overseen by a moon or a sun (sometimes both), Harrison’s symbol for the perfection of nature.

By 1979, with eight successful exhibitions behind him and a growing list of commissions, Harrison took a year’s leave and ultimately left teaching to paint full time. Mountains of Hope, created in that year, signals a pivotal movement in his style. Heavy outlining, a Maori influence, is now subdued. The wild, raging skies dominate the painting. They contrast with the steadfast backdrop of mountains set behind a quieter, albeit lively, village scene. The painting enforces the supremacy of nature over the fleeting existence of humans, who are now reduced in size and depicted in Lowry’s “matchstick” style. Yet the mountains, with their graceful lines, anchor the painting with continuity and hope that all life’s storms will eventually pass.

We thank Katherine Harrison, author of Ted Harrison: Painting Paradise, for contributing the above essay.

For the biography on Dr. Luigi Rossi in PDF format, please click here.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars