A Bird in the Hand - Art Gallery of Alberta

The Alberta Foundation for the Arts Travelling Exhibition ProgramArtist Biographies continuedpainting, often simultaneously utilizing strategies of printmaking, photography, collage, foundobjects, text etc. His prints and paintings are characterized by bright and vivid colours, heavyoutlines, layered paint and impasto.Artist Statement:My art...”is art that speaks from the heart, the social and the political. My art is charged withenergy and colour, vibrant, magical and thus enabling the soul to travel. I envision. I rely on theintuitive, the spiritual, the emotional. To tell stories through my art. I am a storyteller, a visualist.A conveyer of messages...I began to create art as a small boy. My foster mother saw that Ihad a talent (and) was encouraging, loving....She saw the gift in me. Scribblers were filled, artlessons began at an early age....Art school, exhibitions and books, lectures, teaching and therest is history.”Maxwell BatesMaxwell Bates was born in Calgary, Alberta in 1906 and studied at the Provincial Instituteof Technology. He spent the years 1931-1939 in London, exhibiting regularly. As a memberof the British Expeditionary Force sent to France in 1940, he was captured by the Germansand interned in a prison camp from 1940-1945. Returning to Calgary in 1946 he worked asan architect before moving to Victoria, B.C. in 1961. Bates has received many awards for hispainting and was a Fellow of the International Institute of Arts and Letters and a member of theRoyal Canadian Academy. He received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Calgary in1971.Bates’ expressive style, forceful approach to applying colour in bold strokes, and his simple yetstructured compositions provided an alternative approach to landscape paintings, one whichdiffered from The Group of Seven and the English landscape traditions.James Agrell SmithJames Agrell Smith was born in Stettler, Alberta. Although he attended summer school coursesat Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB in 1944, he was considered a self-taught artist. Uponhis discharge from the Canadian Army in 1947 he worked as a freelance artist (1948-1950) untilhe took on full-time employment with Canada Post in Red Deer, Alberta. James Agrell Smithhelped form the strong foundation of today’s printmaking practice in Alberta. He was electedan associate member of the CPE (Canadian Society of Painters, Etchers, and Engravers) in1952, with full membership in 1954. Smith was instrumental in setting up the Western Chapter,Edmonton Branch of the CPE. He exhibited prints in the influential Hart House show entitledWestern Printmakers Exhibit in 1957, as well as exhibiting consistently during the 1950’s and60’s. He retired in 1970 and died in Red Deer in 1988.Agrell Smith’s images are realistic, strong in character and narrative. The traditional black andwhite images are usually small in format. Smith had a great interest in texture and achieved thisin his work through the use of cross-hatching, stippling, and broad jagged cuts, often repeatedfor effect. His work is found in the public collections of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the ArtGallery of Alberta, and the Glenbow Museum as well as many private collections.AFA Travelling Exhibition Program, Edmonton, AB Ph: 780.428.3830 Fax: 780.421.0479youraga.ca