Marie Cecilia Guard

Woman Looking Out

While Ken was finding a path for himself by portraying the heart of his Toronto, Marie was still fighting to pursue her art in spite of the realities that confronted her. Back in the thirties she had worked on a prophetic series of illustrations for Madame Bovary, a book which haunted her. The utter misery of Emma Bovary, as she tried to escape to a romantic dream world, only to be defeated by an environment which refused to set her free and indeed strangled her, became a theme which parallelled Marie's own life. Desperately, she tried to find a way out of her prison. If they sold lots off the back of the property, could they improve their finances? Could they bear to live surrounded by subdivisions? Perhaps actually moving would free her. Her doctor had advised that a drier, warmer climate would help her arthritis. Could they move to the mountains in Arizona? But how, in mid-life, with two daughters and few conventional skills, would they earn a living in such a place? They had put so much of themselves into their home. Would they ever find another place as beautiful?

 

Moreover, the lack of acknowledgement of her art, coupled with acute pressure to comply as a conventional wife and mother was eroding her vision. The sweetness of even a little encouragement would have made it far easier to keep going. As well, for Marie, the pressure to be quiescent was fierce and her resistance was at a low ebb. Of an afternoon she would limp out to stand by the pines which shrouded the house, looking out at the enclosed world of the forest, motionless, numb, only her eyes betraying her suffering.

 

In 1957 she painted in oil one further defiantly whimsical, but symbolic nude. This was "Caprice"--a blythe figure in warmest flesh tones, stepping lightly through a forest world of newly fallen snow. Beauty created in a cold climate. Although she was to pursue truth and beauty wholeheartedly in her work until the end of her days, her art from this time on lost much of its daring. Her style continued to evolve, but never again was there the flare of adventure which had been characteristic of the first half of her life.

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Ken Phillips

Sketching Wrecks

For my father, the fifties was the time when he became wholly committed to his lifelong quest for the Japanese "line that moves everything." The old motto of the Toronto Art Students' League (where each member was supposed to make at least one sketch each day), Nulla dies sine linea (No day without a line), might have been his.

The fresh, unretouched quality of drawing was particularly suited to his impetuous style. In a vivid shorthand, he was able to interpret character, light, atmosphere, and tone. And it is here that his sensibilities can be studied at their best.
At this time, development in Toronto was burgeoning. After the stagnation of the Depression and the War, a new prosperity meant that everywhere familiar, historically and architecturally significant buildings were being torn down to make way for the new. Within a decade there were a new city hall, provincial court house, conservatory of music, and a host of parking lots to serve the expanding population.

My father's love of early Toronto architecture ran deep in his blood. Although never formally trained as an artist, his Grandfather Phillips, as Chief Draftsman for the Toronto Transportation Commission, had supervised the drafting of plans for public buildings. And later his son, my grandfather, became a carpenter, but a carpenter, who, Robert Thomas Allen wrote "wrought from wood wide and gracious curving stairways, graceful bell towers, generous mantels ...the architectural details that suggest the feeling, the pace and the scope of the time in which they were wrought."  It is likely that these men taught my father to appreciate what he saw as he roamed about the city even from his earliest childhood. My father's fascination with actually drawing Toronto may have originated in the thirties when Simpson's commissioned him to do the series of pictures of the city's early days.

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