Patterson Ewan - Artist and Teacher

Planning on heading down to the AGO to see the “Tribute to Patterson Ewan” – a retrospective shoeing from Feb 8 – May 22. Patterson was my painting teacher at UWO so it will be interesting to see his work with the distance of time. Ewan was a Montreal artist who experimented with pure abstraction before making his name as an expressionistic painter of natural phenomena, mostly events and objects in the sky. He is famous for gouging his paintings out of plywood with an electric router. It was these works that he was creating when he was my teacher. At that time, I had no particular interest in abstract art and was more inspired by photography, printmaking (photo lithography) and paper-making. In hindsight, I wish that I knew at that time that I would end up being an abstract artist – I am sure that there would have been lots more to learn from him with the  have a context. As it was, I found him intimidating and not very ‘present’ as a teacher or a mentor – maybe that is the double sided coin of an artist as a teacher. This painting is Halley’s Comet as Seen by Giotto, created in 1979. Ewen passed away February 17, 2002. For more infor on Patterson Ewan, check out http://www.ago.net/