A brush with time A new retrospective art exhibit, which opens Sunday at Ellen’s Creek Gallery, examines 50 years of Henry Purdy’s paintings SALLY COLE The Guardian
One night during an art class in Charlottetown three years ago, a student told Henry Purdy he had found one of his paintings on E-Bay.
“He had googled my name and discovered that an early piece I had done was now in California. It was absolutely incredible news, so I asked him to place a bid on it for me.
“Two years later he comes walking into class one night with Condemned Alley. It was the first time I had seen it in 50 years. It was amazing,” says Purdy.
It’s one of the pieces in a retrospective exhibition that he is mounting in Charlottetown this month.
The painting of the derelict dwelling had great significance to Purdy, as it was one of the only surviving pieces from his early years in Halifax. That’s because when he moved to P.E.I. in 1958 he didn’t bring any of his art with him.
“It was incredible because I remember everything about painting it. It had been selected from the Nova Scotia Society of Artists Spring juried show.
“Two years later I sent it to an art auction at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Saint John where it was bought by the deputy mayor of Halifax. That’s the last I heard of it. So how it got from her possession to California, I’ll never know,” says Purdy, as a look of wonderment comes over his face.
The exhibit, which is entitled It’s About Time, spans the decades from the 1950s to the present and opens Sunday at Ellen’s Creek Gallery in Charlottetown at 2 p.m.
Starting from two paintings — one of a young man holding a glass and the other of an Upper Prince Street apartment building — both done on P.E.I. in 1958 and moving on to landscape, sculpture and portraits, the show follows his life as an artist on Prince Edward Island.
From the 1960s, there’s an oil painting of Strathgartney, the beautiful park in the hills of Bonshaw.
In 1977, his self-portrait, called 2:30 a.m., comes with a story.
“I had just finished a painting and wanted to keep on working but didn’t have any canvas left so I used the wood panel instead,” says Purdy.
Throughout the 1970s, the artist continued to change the other materials he was using. For example, he began sculpting with welded steel. Works from this era are still on view at UPEI and the Confederation Centre of the Arts. Other public work includes stained glass windows at St. Dunstan’s Basilica, and Trinity United Church chapel in Charlottetown and Assumption Church in Stratford.
“For me, the most thrilling is this artwork that has become part of the public domain,” he says.
In the 1980s, his family played an important role in his paintings. In Tea in the Backyard, his wife, Gertie, sits on a lawn chair enjoying a beautiful summer day. There are also acrylic paintings of his children, Scott, Dan and Sharon, and a family portrait, The Five of Us.
“My art has grown along with my family. They were doing things and I used them as available models.
“And in so doing it’s not another art show. It’s a chronicling of my working life,” he says.
That life began in the spring of 1958 when Purdy was finishing his fourth year at what was then known as the Nova Scotia College of Art in Halifax. During the opening reception of the year-end student exhibition, he was discussing with a guest his future plans and desire to continue his artwork.
“He stated that he had just returned from P.E.I. where CFCY-TV was in its beginning stage and had no staff artist,” says Purdy. “I contacted the station, went to the Island for an interview and was hired to begin work on September 2nd, 1958.”
His job included creating artwork for commercials and sets for television shows, as well as signs for station breaks and Do Not Adjust Your Set and, later on, news photography.
“I worked with this station for the next five years," says Purdy who went on to become the director of the School of Visual Arts at Holland College, as well as paint part-time.
Now 50 years later he continues his passions — creating new pieces and teaching dozens of students each week at Ellen’s Creek Gallery.
“I never cease to be amazed at how quickly time passes and how much fun it is to look back and remember the things we did.
“I’ll also never forget the hundreds of people I met along the way and the support that I received. It has been a wonderful journey,” he says.
At a glance
Some fast facts
Born: Wolfville, N.S.
Grew up: Halifax.
Inspired by: John Cook, Han Earnie, Adrian Arsenault.
About the artist: “Henry Purdy responds to qualities of evanescent light, respects individuality, family and community, spirit of place and national identity,” states curator Ted Fraser in the catalogue for his exhibition Freedom Comes inside at the Confederation Centre, 1999.
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