Attila Richard Lukacs was born in Calgary, Alberta in 1962. He lives and works in Vancouver. Attila Richard Lukacs famously combines reverence and irreverence in his large-scale paintings. Lukacs graduated from Vancouver’s Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1985 and a year later moved to West Berlin, where he would stay for a decade and make his name. Part of a group of artists known in the 1980s as the Young Romantics, Lukacs used the lauded chiaroscuro of Caravaggio and the flattened planes and gold leaf of symbolist painters like Gustav Klimt to create startling works depicting homosocial and, often, blatantly homoerotic scenes. The skinheads of 1980s West Germany were of particular interest to Lukacs, who used the men of this subculture as his studio models.
Lukacs moved to New York in 1996 and to Hawaii in 2001, eventually resettling in Vancouver, where he currently lives. Later series, exhibited extensively and internationally, have depicted primates and flora, while even more recent works have veered into abstraction and installation. A 2008 exhibition, accompanied by a monograph, displayed a number of the Polaroids Lukacs took of his studio models in Berlin and New York, a body of work stored and catalogued by artist Michael Morris. Lukacs’s work has been collected by the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Vancouver Art Gallery, among other institutions.
Andre Ethier was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1977. Andre is a Canadian rock singer-songwriter and visual artist, who was formerly associated with the indie rock band The Deadly Snakes. He has also released three solo albums. He attended Etobicoke School of the Arts for Visual Arts and received a BFA from Concordia University in 2001. On June 10, 2007, Ethier sang the Canadian national anthem in Los Angeles where the Dodgers were hosting his hometown Toronto Blue Jays. He got the gig because he shares his name with Dodgers outfielder Andre Ethier.
Ethier paints portraits, figures and landscapes in oil, his work has been described as a grotesque realism and is influenced by neo-expressionism, primitive art, underground comic art and the works of Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Odilon Redon. He has had solo shows at Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles, Greener Pastures Contemporary Art in Toronto, and Derek Eller Gallery in New York. In The New York Times Ken Johnson wrote: “André Ethier’s funny, faux-naïve paintings resemble the works of a self-taught, semi-talented high school stoner steeped in heavy-metal music, fantasy novels and the visionary arts of the French Symbolists”.
Doris Jean McCarthy was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1910. McCarthy attended the Ontario College of Art from 1926 to 1930, where she was awarded various scholarships and prizes. Among her mentors and teachers at the Ontario College of Art were members of the Group Of Seven: Arthur Lismer, A.Y. Jackson, J.E.H. MacDonald and Lawren Harris. She became a teacher shortly thereafter and taught most frequently at Central Technical School in downtown Toronto from 1932 until she retired in 1972. She spent most of her life living and working in Scarborough (now a Toronto district), Ontario, though she traveled abroad extensively and painted the landscapes of various countries, including: Costa Rica, Spain, Italy, Japan, India, England, and Ireland.
McCarthy was nonetheless probably best known for her Canadian landscapes and her depictions of Arctic icebergs. In 1989, she graduated from the University of Toronto Scarborough with a B.A in English. McCarthy’s work has been exhibited and collected extensively in Canada and abroad, in both public and private art galleries Including: National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and Wynick/Tuck Gallery. McCarthy also penned three autobiographies, chronicling the various stages of her life: A Fool in Paradise (Toronto: MacFarlane, Walter & Ross, 1990), The Good Wine (Toronto: MacFarlane, Walter & Ross, 1991), and Ninety Years Wise (Toronto: Second Story Press, 2004). She was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. She was the recipient of the Order of Ontario, the Order of Canada, honorary degrees from the University of Calgary, the University of Toronto, Trent University, the University of Alberta, and Nipissing University, an honorary fellowship from the Ontario College of Art and Design and also had a gallery named in her honor at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
Doris has received many awards and distinctions including: President, Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolor, 1956; President, Ontario Society of Artists, 1964; Canadian Woman Artist of the Year Award, 1983; The Order of Canada, 1986; Bachelor of Art in English, University of Toronto, 1989; The Order of Ontario, 1992; the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Centenary Health Centre Foundation, Scarborough, Ontario named in her honor, 1998; William Kilbourn Award in recognition of her lifetime contribution to the arts in the City of Toronto, 1999. Doris McCarthy’s extraordinary career embraces more than 70 years of Canadian art history. Her paintings and liturgical art are found in selected galleries and museums including The Gallery at Jasper Park Lodge, Alberta and The McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario. Doris McCarthy has been featured in articles for the Toronto Star, CBC and The globe and Mail. A major retrospective exhibition at the McMichael Canadian Collection in Kleinberg, Ontario, that opened late in 1999, Celebrating Life: The Art of Doris McCarthy, was a clear measure of the level of recognition that had finally come her way. She died on November 25, 2010.
SELECTED COLLECTIONS: McCarthy is represented in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinberg, Ontario; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Art Gallery of Hamilton; the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta; the London Regional Art Gallery, London, Ontario; the High Court of Australia, Canberra; The Royal Collection, Windsor Castle, England; and the Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto, Scarborough, where her archives are also housed.
The record price for this artist at auction is $193,259.00 for Antarctica from Above, sold at Heffel Vancouver in 2021.
Allen Sapp was born in Saskatchewan January 2, 1928. Sapp was a Canadian Cree painter, who resided in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. His art and his story have become well known throughout Canada and became an inspiration to many. His paintings tell a personal story, and many feature images of his grandmother, and reflect the love he had for her. His paintings seem to touch something in all people and his work and life story have been the subject of numerous books and television documentaries.
Sapp was born on the Red Pheasant Reserve, south of the city of North Battleford. His mother suffered from tuberculosis and eventually died during his adolescence. Sapp was raised by his maternal grandmother and grandfather, Albert and Maggie Soonias. As a child he was often ill and spent long hours in bed. His grandmother nurtured him and encouraged his love of drawing, teaching him in the Cree ways. He attended the Red Pheasant School, but was often mocked and teased by the other children and teachers because of his desire to draw. His grandfather removed him from the school because he needed him on the farm. Sapp remained at home and cared for his grandmother until she died in 1963. After her death, he then moved to North Battleford to try to make a living as an artist, selling paintings door to door. In 1966 he met Dr. Allan Gonor. Dr. Gonor recognized Sapp’s talent and encouraged him to paint what he knew — life on the reserve. As soon as Sapp began to paint his childhood memories, he was flooded with images, and would stay up all night painting.
By the 1970s, his work was known across North America and as far away as London, England. In 1986, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada “for his portrayals of Native peoples and of life on the reserve”. In 1985, he was awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit. In 1975, he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. In 2003, he received the Governor General’s Award for English language children’s illustration for the book, The Song Within My Heart. He died in his sleep on December 28, 2015.
SELECTED COLLECTIONS: Sapp works can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON; Allan Sapp Gallery, North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada; Madrona Gallery, Victoria, BC Canada; Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON; Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau, Quebec; Museum Association of Saskatchewan, Regina, SK; Gorman Museum Of Native American Art, Davis, CA.
Robert Markle was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1936. His origin was Ontario Mohawk, but he never wanted to be associated as a native artist. In 1954, he studied at the Ontario College of Art where his originality was seen from the start. A furious rant, that is still unknown to how it began, would expel Markle from the school. Fortunately while attending OCA he was able to meet Marlene, his future wife and muse, and his inspiration for the female form would grow. He began exhibiting in many group shows and would later get an important break in his one-man show at the Isaacs Gallery in 1963. The controversial exhibition ‘Eros 65’ at the Dorothy Cameron Gallery would boost Markle’s reputation as an artist. After being raided for ‘obscene’ pieces, it would spark the debate over censorship in Canada. After leaving a strong impression on the Toronto arts scene, he moved to Holstein where he would continue his work.
Markle focused on the female nude which was transformed over the years. Whether studying a single pose or capturing the allure of the dancer’s movement, Markle was unafraid to try something new. He was also a writer, teacher, and jazz musician. He played the saxophone in the Artists’ Jazz Band with fellow artists Graham Coughtry, Gordon Rayner, Nabuo Kubota and Michael Snow. Markle wrote many articles for magazines and newspapers such as Maclean’s, Toronto Life, The Star and Globe and Mail. Markle was also a teacher from 1966 to 1977. He taught at the New School of Art, the Ontario College of Art and the University of Guelph. Markle was fond of teaching and enjoyed the conversations and engagement with the students.
After a serious motorcycle crash in 1970, Markle was left with the difficult process of restoring the use of his hands. Using the only tool that he could grasp, a big shaving brush became his outlet to paint again. These works that he created are extremely expressionistic and would begin the investigation of curves, shadows and movements of the female figure. He would continue to push the boundaries by accentuating the deep contrast and build the relationships between his models and muse. Markle also used sculptures to showcase the diversity of his techniques. Whether through the whirligigs or the large installation pieces and murals, Markle was able to explore the range of his Mohawk background, the landscape and female figure into one. Robert Markle’s life would be cut short after an accident on July 5, 1990. His last series consisted of mono prints that showed some early techniques of layering, but are also less densely filled. This last series shows how Markle was still investigating his subjects while placing himself within the imagery. Even until his last day, Markle continued to pursue every possible angle and depict what he was truly passionate about.
SELECTED COLLECTIONS: Markle is represented in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Art Gallery of Hamilton; the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta; the London Regional Art Gallery, London, Ontario.
The record price for this artist at auction is $8,400.00 for The Sound of the Mountain, sold at Cowley Abbott in 2022.
