Provenance:

Private Collection, Toronto

Literature:

Terrence Heath, Ronald L. Bloore: Not Without Design, (exhibition catalogue), Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, 1983, page 42.

Note:

Often cited as the “white on white painter,” Ronald Bloore played a prominent role in the Canadian art scene for almost fifty years as an artist, academic, and gallery director.

Bloore first gained national recognition in 1961 when he participated in an exhibition of “The Regina Five” organized by the National Gallery of Canada, which then toured across the country.  The following year Bloore was the recipient of a Senior Arts Fellowship grant from the Canada Council that allowed him to travel to Greece, Egypt and Turkey.  Upon his return to Winnipeg in 1963, where he was Director of the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery at Regina College, Bloore became exclusively focused on experimenting with tones of white.

For most of his career, Bloore refused to discuss his specific aims in the creation of these works, although he spoke at length regarding the nature of art and the problems of making art in Canada while teaching at York University’s Faculty of Arts from 1966-1985. His enduring interest in cultural history and antiquity has led many to believe that the patterns created by his sculptural technique form a sort of unknown or forgotten language which can be communicated to the viewer visually. The artist, however, maintained that his art contained no secrets or hidden messages; that the impact of his white paintings was immediate and straightforward.