By Jessica Rose
Six decades ago, Ottawa painter Kenneth Lochhead met a friend of Pablo Picasso in a cafe in southern France.
With little persuasion, this friend arranged for him to meet the artist himself at Picasso’s second-floor studio.
“We went over, met him and had a glass of wine,” recalls Lochhead. Though the conversation was heavily mediated by an interpreter, Lochhead says he is grateful that he could be in the presence of a visionary of modern art.
Today, it is Lochhead himself who is being praised for his influence in visual art, receiving Canada’s highest artistic honour. He is one of seven recipients of this year’s Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts.
“This honours award is very overwhelming,” says Lochhead.
Along with a monetary prize of $15,000, the winner’s work is being showcased at the National Gallery of Canada until July 3. The annual award was created in 1999 by the Governor General of Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Born in Ottawa in 1926, Lochhead grew up on Third Avenue in the Glebe. He attended Glashan Public School in Centretown and then Glebe Collegiate. Later, he excelled in art as a student at the Ottawa Technical High School.
With the help of a trusted teacher he chose the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, recalling it fondly as the “city of brotherly love.”
In 1949, he graduated and moved back to Canada, launching his professional career in 1950 as director of the Regina College School of Art.
In 1955, Lochhead created the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops, which allowed artists from the prairies, who often felt secluded from havens such as Toronto or New York, the opportunity to attend professional workshops with visiting artists.
Lochhead later became known as one of the Regina Five, a name given to the artists who were part of the 1961 National Gallery of Canada’s circulating exhibition called Five Painters from Regina.
“He made Regina a very dynamic place for visual art in Canada,” says François Lachapelle, head of visual arts for The Canada Council for the Arts, crediting him for “bringing modern art to the prairie provinces.”
Between the fifties and the eighties, Lochhead taught at many Canadian universities, but in 1975 he returned home to teach at the University of Ottawa. He has lived in the Glebe for 30 years now.
Ottawa painter and former student, David W. Jones recalls the summer of 1978 fondly, when he signed up for Lochhead’s landscape painting class at the University of Ottawa. The small class of approximately 12 students travelled across Ottawa five days a week, searching for unique areas to paint.
Jones remembers how his unconventional teacher would post a map on the wall, each day sending a dart spiralling through the air towards it.
“Wherever it landed, we would go,” says Jones. “One time it landed in the middle of the Ottawa River.” Though they decided to head to the Quèbec side of the river for the day, Lochhead insisted that they all bring their swim trunks, just incase.
This course changed Jones’ direction as an artist by teaching him to paint from nature itself and not from a photograph or memory.
“He opened so many avenues that I’ll always be grateful for,” he says. “As a former student, I represent the hundreds of students he has had an affect on.”
It was Jones who had the idea to nominate Lochhead for the Governor General’s Award. The bid was officially placed by Lesley Phimister, co-director of the Ontario branch of Canadian Artists Representation/Le Front des Artistes Canadiens (CARFAC). Lochhead thanked both Jones and Phimister during his speech at the National Gallery on March 23.
Though he is now in semi-retirement, Lochhead has hardly left his paintbrush behind, despite growing tired easily.
“I have cancer, so it has taken a lot of my energy,” he says, referring to his regiment of chemotherapy.
Lochhead says he tries to paint for two or three hours each day.
“After that, the painting gets bad,” he laughs.
It is Lochhead’s eclecticism that sets him apart from other artists, says Jones. Throughout his career Lochhead has divided his love between abstract, landscape and other modern movements.
“He tries styles as he might try on a suit, to see what fits him best,” says Jones.