Art Gallery of Northumberland
55 King Street
Cobourg, Ontario
1.905.372.0333
Women’s Work
March 10 – May 1, 2016
Opening reception March 10, 2016 from 7 – 9 pm
“To love a painting is to feel that this presence is…not an object but a voice” (Andre Malraux)
The Art Gallery of Northumberland is pleased to present Women Artists in the collection of Toronto and Prince Edward County-based collector Terri Lipman.
Lipman has been collecting since she was a child and attributes this innate love affair with art to her mother, Maxine Springer. She grew up in a home filled with art and design and outings to galleries and antique shops were routine for this mother-daughter duo.
The exhibition features historical and contemporary works by Canadian and International women. Acquiring works by women artists has been both a priority and focus for Lipman.
“I’ve always been drawn to women’s work – the calibre and diversity in both style and media, the delicacy and strength.” The works in the collection are portals into an ever changing time, place and emotional state. Through the art, we travel to both familiar and undiscovered territory.
To identify or define a ‘female aesthetic’ is difficult and counter-productive – it is simply the work Lipman responds to. Historically, women have struggled to gain recognition in the art world but hopefully, we are entering a more promising gender-less age.
The collection is eclectic and diverse and yet very much connected through Lipman’s vision. As time passes and the collection changes and grows, it takes on its own identity – becoming a thing in its own right – a sublime and magical sum of its parts. It is important for Lipman to know, follow and support the artists. It adds an essential dimension to the work. She considers this relationship sacred and one of privilege and honour. The exhibition will include work by Helen Cavalier Quinn Campbell, Lisa DiQuinzio, Helen Flockhart, Heather Goodchild, Pegi Nicol Macleod, Mary Mack, Jennifer Murphy, Doris Richardson, Genia Rickerson, Margaux Williamson and Mary Wrinch.
Lipman continues on her passionate journey of collecting.
A Visionary Journey
Works from the Collection of Terri Lipman
In 2013, the RMG invited Toronto and Prince Edward County-based collector Terri Lipman to share works by women artists from her vast collection. The exhibition, a riot of colour, form, texture, and subjects struck a chord with our audience and we were keen to revisit Terri’s eclectic and inspiring collection. This offering focusses on work by male artists.
There is a distinct difference between buying art and collecting art. Inevitably, collecting brings with it emotional responses, memories, connections. The latter is certainly the case for Terri Lipman.
Her collection was inspired by that of her parents’ and she has fond memories of her mother taking her to galleries and antique shops as a child. Thus began a passion for collecting historical art. But Lipman found that collecting the art of living artists was ultimately more fulfilling; she began to visit artists’ studios and make the links between the historic work in her collection and what she saw in contemporary practices.
Terri Lipman expresses her thoughts on the work in her collection:
There is a thread that links the old with the new. These artists have a reverence, knowledge and respect for their Canadian modernist predecessors not to mention their incredible skill and technique. They carry the torch but have a fresh approach and vision—a clear and strong sense of their place.
Meeting and forming relationships with artists led to introductions to others and their work—indeed, she credits artists as her mentors whose generosity have made her the collector that she is today.
As with the work of women artists, Lipman continues to be inspired by evidence of the “hand”—texture, form and colour. Her collection forms a continuum between the old and new as her vision continues to evolve.
Contemporary Artists:
Jay Isaac
Roberto Rosenman
Adrian Williams
David Doig
Andreas Drenters
Noel Middleton
Jeffrey Harrison
Morley Shayuk
Eli Langer
Simon Muscat
Andre Ethier
Robert Webster
Scott Mcdermid
Jerome Couelle
John Anderson
Jon Todd
Scott Griffin
Historical Artists:
William Ronald
Rolph Scarlett
Joseph Sydney Hallam
Gordon Mckinnley Webber
Ants Vomm
Bertram Brooker
Paavo Airola
Louis Archambault
William John Bertram Newcombe
Armand Flint
Sydney Hollinger Watson
Frederick Horseman Varley
Fritz Brandtner
Norman Elder
Phillip Surrey
Barker Fairley
Thomas Garland Greene
Roger-Francois Thepot
Hart Massey
Dik Zander
International Historical Artists:
Man Ray
Marcel Duchamp
Ben Nicholson
James Thurber
Lucien Weill
Paavo Airola is returning to Quinte! Many of you will remember him as a wonderful painter and teacher who had a very intense, but short, tenure here in Eastern Ontario. In fact, many of the artists who formed the Belleville Art Association, Gallery 121 and who have shown here at the gallery over the years were very strongly influenced by his work.
Terri Lipman has been collecting the works of Paavo Airola and his students since she first discovered him in 1986, and this incredibly passionate journey spanning more than a quarter century has led to this moment – the first ever public showing of this magnificent private collection.
Over these many years, in her quest to learn more about the artist and see more of his work, Terri had the good fortune to become involved with the incredible patrons, collectors, colleagues, friends and artists who would be pivotal in helping her to amass this collection. Terri says: “with every archival article, phone call, road trip, cup of tea, note taking session, Airola came to life through the stories and anecdotes of those who painted with him.”
Local artists who studied with Airola include Philippa Faulkner, Dorothy Brown, Barbara Whelan, Doris Richardson, Wilma Alexander, Genia Rickerson, Alfred Karu and Helen Cavalier Quinn.
We are so happy to be able to show a substantial body of his work, along with the paintings of his students in Galleries One and Two from March 7th to March 30, 2013. Please join us on Saturday, March 9th from 2-4 p.m. to meet Terri, the woman whose drive and love for this artist made this exhibition possible, some of the artists featured and enjoy a story or two about Paavo Airola.
Robert McLaughlin Gallery . 72 Queen Street, Civic Centre. Oshawa, Ontario L1H 3Z3 .905 576 3000
Opening reception at ‘RMG Fridays’ on February 1st – 7 p.m.
Exhibition runs from February 1st to February – 21 April, 2013
German philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote that “ownership is the most intimate relationship one can have to objects: not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.”
The second in a series of exhibitions featuring works from local collectors, this exhibition highlights one aspect of Toronto and Prince Edward County-based collector Terri Lipman’s collection: women artists. Her collection consists of furniture, artefacts, paintings, sculpture, drawings, and fibre works but in particular, the RMG shares her interest in the work of Canadian women artists.
As a child Lipman made regular trips with her mother to art galleries and antique shops and her parents’ home was filled with Canadian art, modern Scandinavian design and mid-century pottery. Ranging from work by mid 20th century and contemporary Canadian women artists to anonymous folk and design work, Lipman’s interest in “hand works” has obviously steered her own collection. Through collecting, she has formed wonderful relationships not only with the artwork, but with the artists, as well.
While the work in this exhibition is diverse, what conjoins them for Lipman are impressions where reality is tinged with reverie, stories intimated, lessons learned and all conveyed thoughtfully through a myriad of materials. As much as the artworks, Lipman is interested in the journey of collecting: where it began; where it is today; and where it is going.
The exhibition includes work by Pegi Nicol Macleod, Jori Smith, Mary Wrinch, Heather Goodchild, Lisa Diquinzio, Shary Boyle, and Naomi Yasui among others.
Curated by Linda Jansma.
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