Celebration of Joy: Curator’s Statement
Never Getting Older....
This writing is an attempt to put the portraits painted by Joy MacFadyen, and there were many of them, into a perspective that may be useful to you the viewer. In the virtual world of this gallery
the intimacy of seeing the portraits in person is not possible, however that experience from my personal point of view is more powerful. Indeed, that is the quest of the Gallery X organization, a
substantial art gallery that could house such a large exhibition, viewable in person.
THE PAST
Sticking to Canada, what were the objectives of portrait painters like Varley, Plamondon, and Paul Kane? What about Cornelius Krieghoff who painted an impressive portrait of himself, in addition to a few others with red or blue wool hats and a clay pipe or two. Antoine Plamondon also painted some outstanding pieces of the Quebec middle class more than a century ago. What did they intend, or accomplish in their own time, for the many ‘sitters’ looking for an excellent rendition of their features to be recorded for posterity?
Portraits are often hard to relate to if they are not of your own time. Pieces as recent as Varley’s would be a long way back for a lot of people in the younger modern population. Although we can try to imagine the meaning of older settings and accoutrements, we are not there in body or mind, so in the end we hunt for meaning in the face.
One would think that this would be true of all portraits but it is a point of view that attends to ‘head and shoulder’ portraits. The head and shoulder portrait has been traditional for many centuries and comes in never ending variations. The head and shoulders might be shortened to just a head and neck, or might be stretched to include the whole body. It could in some cases be more than a single person and might be as broad as Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” with 34 recognizable heads contributing to a complicated composition. Indeed, before the birth of photography we have relied upon portraits to view a likeness of the rich and famous. We all know what Henry VIII looked like. We are not so sure about poet Robert Browning’s “Last Duchess painted on the wall”, but we can be sure she wasn’t a caricature. The artistic license, and intentional lampoon of a caricature was not what the subject was looking for, no, it was as close a likeness as the painter could accomplish.
Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps the most famous for having achieved what we have all believed to be a true likeness in his mysterious portrait of Mona Lisa. Upon viewing it for the first time the Mona
Lisa is much smaller than you might have previously thought, but there are many different sizes for portraits and they are often not relatable to the importance of the person. These days we would
expect a portrait of The Prime minister of Canada to be large and hang on the walls of parliament, certainly many times the size of Mona Lisa. I would be obviously remiss here not to mention in this vein the remarkable paintings of prominent Canadians by our Scarborough artist Phil Richards.
Portraits have been carved, sketched with a pencil, drawn with pastels and charcoal, painted with watercolours, oils, and acrylics, and in the last couple of centuries, rendered with photography.
Who has not heard of Yousuf Karsh, our famous Canadian Photographer whose portrait of Winston Churchill was recently stolen from the wall in the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa?
Strangely in Oscar Wilde’s book, “Portrait of Dorian Gray” the reason for the portrait is that Dorian was considered a very beautiful person, the irony of the story was the portrait became older and uglier as the novel progressed, an interesting plot I will leave your reading to reveal.
Perhaps the one miracle of a completed portrait is its subject never ages! Some who grow ever older, wishing the reverse to be true, will only find eternal life in their painted image.
THE PRESENT
Now we come to the work of Joy MacFadyen, our present-day portrait artist who painted over a hundred paintings of Scarborough residents. They were not all Scarborough citizens, but the vast majority were. For many we have names, but for others Joy didn’t record a name, and for many we don’t have a great deal of information, That will be the job of future researchers. With Joy’s inimitable humour she states about one bridal painting that she cannot “remember her name, but she is probably divorced by now!” Lol We do have to remember that hidden in the brushstrokes of each painting is Joy’s brilliant sense of humour, which may have affected the rendition in some ways. Perhaps the rendition also reflects Joy’s personality, and we should look for that in her works. We should likely do the same for all portrait painters. This short essay examines a few of Joy’s portraits and perhaps will give all some guidance about the interpretation of the rest of this very large collection. You will have your own ideas and opinions and Joy would have appreciated your discourse.
The first portrait is Christine Valentini, a close friend of Joy’s. I chose this piece as it is a watercolour, a medium that Joy didn’t often choose likely because of its unforgiving nature. Portraits are so exacting that watercolour pieces are not as plentiful as oils. I think Joy demonstrated here not only an excellent mastery of watercolour, but also her very ‘down to earth’ natural approach to her subjects, with very few additional clues to the sitter’s personality. However, one can readily assume from the rendering that Christine Valentini is a happy person, serious in intent, with a very comfortable demeanor.
Oils are more forgiving, being more opaque, and having an added advantage of taking longer to dry. It is easy to make ‘corrections’ in this medium, and no one would ever know because each brushstroke opaquely covers the last. Acrylics are similar to oils in that they are opaque, but they are water soluble until they dry. When they dry they are not water soluble, and they dry very quickly, so quickly one has to be careful about ruining brushes, but once again each brushstroke covers the last. The records of Joy’s paintings rarely indicate the medium used but we do know that she used all three mediums for her portrait paintings, but the vast majority are oils.
THE FUTURE
The eternal characteristic that holds true for most of Joy’s portraits is that they all appear to be happy and smiling, which is perhaps, more of a characteristic of the painter than of the subjects chosen. Joy was a consistently happy person and it is reflected in most of the portraits she painted. Perhaps that is the greatest part of her legacy. Maybe there are other personal characteristics one can glean from her portraiture, things that will be, from now on, important in our lives.
One last point before you start searching for yourself. Even though Joy’s ‘Lipton Soup’ commissioned portraits, 17 people in all, show close anatomical accuracy, (perhaps part of the specifications in the commission), I don’t think it can be considered a must for all her works. ‘Magical Realism’ wasn’t an objective of her work. Magical realism tends to lose its objective to a certain extent in its cold and calculating definition of form, light, and colour. One has to observe that Joy has a certain whimsical touch to paintings as in “guy from the monarchist league”, “Betsy”, “Doris McCarthy”, and “Karin Eaton”. The brushstrokes are stylized and at the same time somewhat dashing. Backgrounds are mostly non-descript. It’s the portrait itself, in its happiest moments, that will be taken brightly into the future.
Peter Marsh BA CSPWC OSA SCA TWS
September 2, 2023