Published: May 16, 2008 09:57 am            

ART: Landscape exhibit arrives at Kenan Center

Lockport’s Kenan Center will present an art exhibition beginning Friday with the unassuming title “Works of Lawrence V. Badgery, Landscape Artist,” but that’s where the ingenuousness stops.

The 125 works on display will offer stories of art and of history, to be sure, but also of a radical rethinking of the traditional subject of landscapes, and of artists handing down technique and theory to their students.

The story begins in the 1920s in Toronto when seven painters organized to create a distinctive and strictly Canadian approach to painting landscapes. This “Group of Seven,” six of whom worked as magazine illustrators, awoke their fellow citizens to the possibilities of Canadian art and eventually came to represent their homeland on the world stage.

Badgery (1906-1998) was a student of three of the group’s members at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. The owner and curator of the Kenan show, artist Donald Little of Lockport, was Badgery’s nephew and student.

“They wanted to sell Canada to Canadians, and they traveled everywhere in Canada” said Little of the “Group of Seven.” “Their style was unique — impressionist, expressionist, bold and spontaneous — truly a Canadian style. Today, every house in Canada has an example.”

While it might seem strange that a vast and visually arresting subject like the scenery of Canada only recently became a serious topic for painters, it is the deliberate creation of a unique and compelling language for landscapes that is celebrated here.



“Colored browns, in the oils,” Little said. “You’d see the orange color popping off the canvas. And my uncle (Badgery) was in the middle of all of this and inspired by all of them. We have sketches from where he lived in Toronto, a dirt road that’s in the middle of the city now. There is a lot of historic reference in his work, a lot of painting of things that don’t exist anymore.”

Badgery learned from his three teachers — J.E.H. MacDonald, Franklin Carmichael and Franz Johnson — in night school art classes before hitting the road himself to paint the serene landscapes of the country. The Kenan exhibition will include oils, gauche, acrylics, scratchboard and silk-screen serigraph techniques, as well as the artists’ numerous notes and sketches.

Much of the comprehensive collection will be offered for sale, and Little will be available several nights for a docent’s tour of the show to tell stories of traversing Canada with his uncle. Sixteen of Little’s paintings are also a part of the exhibition.

For the Kenan Center, the Badgery show is a step in developing a reputation within the local art world.

“We’ve established an excellent relationship with Canadian artists,” said Elaine Harrigan, Kenan’s marketing director. “Part of our goal is to bring this work to the local community. These are works the Burchfield-Penney and the Albright-Knox (in Buffalo) don’t carry.”

Of the Badgery technique, she said, “You can always spot a Canadian landscape, with the distant pieces of color. They make a bold statement about that environment.”

It is the story of art. Artists innovate, then teach, and their students carry on the tradition. The once-scorned but now highly desirable style of the “Group of Seven” passed through the prolific Badgery and to his nephew.

While it carries a lot of emotional freight — of a country that was previously unrecognized for any artistic achievement or even as a topic for great art, of relationships between artists and students and of an uncle and his nephew out for a day of painting the landscape — the Kenan Center show will offer an inclusive presentation of one artist’s dedication to the study of nature.

One room is designed to show how Badgery worked, with the numerous notes and sketches essential in understanding the work. Beyond an attractive show of landscapes, it is a comprehensive look at one man’s relationship with his country’s beauty and with his art.



-Ed Adamczyk is a freelance writer from Kenmore.



IF YOU GO

* WHAT: Lawrence V. Badgery, Landscape Artist exhibition

* WHERE: Kenan Center, 433 Locust St., Lockport

* WHEN: Friday-June 29; gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday; Lockport artist Donald Little will offer tours at 1, 2 and 3 p.m. May 31-June 1, and 2 p.m. June 12

* MORE INFORMATION: Call 433-2617 or visit kenancenter.org

        

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