Conservative Crush: William Kurelek

Fridays, especially in the summer, are theoretically supposed to be for easy, fun tasks. So today I'm going to give a shout-out to a Canadian artist who I love in an easy, fun way—despite his conservative leanings. That would be good ol' William Kurelek, born in 1927, died 1977, but still loved by many today.

Part of the appeal for Kurelek for me is a mix of nostalgia and brainwashing—when I was a kid we had the book "A Prairie Boy's Winter," which reproduces a variety of Kurelek's paintings on farm life in 1930sish Manitoba, and I pored over that thing hundreds of times.

I also grew up on the prairies, albeit in the cities of Winnipeg and Calgary, so I knew some of those things Kurelek depicted—snowdrifts as tall as a twelve-year-old, skin stuck to metal in -30 weather, sundogs and the like.

So when I look at his paintings today in person—the Art Gallery of Ontario has a really nice room of them—I definitely get that lower-brain-stem pang. (I should head to the Niagara Falls Art Gallery sometime—for some reason they have his archive.)

Another thing I really like about Kurelek's work is his unpretentious portrayal of artistic activity. His work "The Painter" (no image, sorry), shows a massive slice of cloud-dotted prairie sky, a farmer's dirt-strewn field, and then, in the lowest part of the painting, a guy sitting in a modest red car, painting on a small board in the back seat. Sweet!

Also nice is his wide-scope view. In a painting of Toronto's Don Valley as seen from an overpass—it seems like a simple look at highways and apartment buildings, but the verdant strips of green that pop up here and there provide realistic relief. (His 1974 painting of strollers on Toronto's Beaches Boardwalk might also be of interest to urban history enthusiasts.) In some ways, these many-figure paintings are reminiscent of Breughel, one of Kurelek's acknowledged influences.

Some of his works also have a Canadian Norman Rockwell feel, but to me it's never overly saccharine, just a slice of life. One image shows a quarter-side view of someone on an outhouse seat, looking through an aged Eaton catalogue whose pages have been ripped out for use as toilet paper. It's just a picture of country life at a time—or hey, maybe an anticonsumerist screed, take your pick!

What makes Kurelek conservative is partly his painting style and partly his religious views, which were quite Catholic. He has some paintings of the crucifixion and fire-and-brimstone moments which are pretty old-school ideologically. Still, I'm charmed by the fact that he updated the audience at the crucifixion in one painting with prairie-pothole folk in toques and parkas. What can I say? You can take the girl out of Winnipeg, but you can't take the Winnipeg out of the girl.

All works by William Kurelek: Crows leaving for the South, 1974 From Joyner Waddington's; Balsam Avenue After Heavy Snowfall 1972 from canadianart.ca; painting of skaters from Great Crested Flycatcher; Children playing in a snowbank, 1971 from Joyner Waddington's; I Triumphed and I Saddened With All Weather, 1970. From Telling Stories