PERI PHILLIPS MCQUAY | Passionate Gesture

Passionate Gesture

An indication of the kind of public enthusiasm which the work of these artists generates occurred several years ago when the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario, staged a feature retrospective show of Marie Cecilia Guard's paintings. Curatorial staff noted that interest and attendance at this show by people of all ages and from all backgrounds was exceptional.

Ken Phillips and Marie Cecilia Guard

The Biography

In this accessible, literary story of a significant Canadian artist couple, I explore what it means to live one's life as an artist in a book which will add to the scholarly information available on the subject of these artists and this period in Canadian art. My hope is to stimulate dialogue about what it can mean to be an artist in Canada.

Their story includes the artists' childhood during a fascinating golden age in Toronto, Phillips' and Guard's studies at the Ontario College of Art and in New York, their successes during the Depression years, how their work crystallized and matured, their experience teaching art, Ken's love affair with the dying theatres of Toronto, further exhibitions, the artists' trips to Europe in the seventies and eighties, and their powerful development in their final years.

Working with an uncommon degree of technical mastery, their work often is compelling, always aiming to convey the heart of their subjects.

As husband and wife, they frequently painted the same subjects, but from different (but complimentary) perspectives. (The feminist beliefs that guided them dring the 30's and 40's when such views were unusual).

They both painted and drew landscapes, figures, architectural studies and still lifes in a number of media, Ken's specialty, elegiac Piranesi-like pen-and-ink renderings of Toronto buildings scheduled for demolition, and Marie's stunning life-sized nudes, painted in oil, are particularly noteworthy.

THE WORKS Their works include oil paintings, water colours, drawings in various media and prints. Subjects include landscape, still life, wildflower pictures and figure studies by both artists, and powerful oil portraits by Guard as well as spirited pen and ink drawings of historic former Toronto landmarks by Phillips. The style is representational, but more concerned with the spirit of the subject than a photographic verisimilitude. The Group of Seven influence is evident, but these artists went on to evolve a distinctive style of their own.

Their story includes: The Nonsuch, KP

childhood during a fascinating golden age in Toronto
Phillips' and Guard's studies at the Ontario College of Art and in New York
romance and marriage
their successes during the Depression years
how their work crystallized and matured
how they influenced each other as artists
their experience teaching art
further exhibitions
the artists' sketching trips to Europe in the seventies and eighties
their powerful continuing development in their final years
Particularly interesting is the atmosphere of the vibrant Toronto of the twenties through sixties

Seeded within the story, I have covered topics which include:

the roles of poverty and children in an artist's career
the experience of portraiture
the natures of different media and their use by these artists
the artist and success
how Phillips' and Guard's perspective of (and celebration) of the Canadian landscape differed from that of the Group of Seven
the role of a Canadian woman artist from the twenties onward
portraits and self-portraits
portraits of husband and wife, looking at each other
Marie's remarkable nudes, including the life-sized works of the thirties (a woman looking at herself and other women)
a survey of the evolution of each artist over six decades
Phillips' elegaic drawings of a changing city
Marie's ground-breaking work in the thirties

SIGNIFICANCE The life and work of Ken Phillips and Marie Cecilia Guard is significant because they were artists, trained in the Group of Seven style, who continued to explore and evolve throughout sixty years of work. Furthermore, as husband and wife, they frequently painted the same subjects, but from different (but complimentary) perspectives. They both painted and drew landscapes, figures, architectural studies and still lifes in a number of media. Ken's specialty, eloquent pen and ink renderings of Toronto buildings scheduled for demolition, and Marie's stunning life-sized nudes, painted in oil during the thirties and forties, are particularly noteworthy.