RON BOLT l Salt Water l Primal Light
RON BOLT l Salt Water l Primal Light Ron Bolt s career began some forty years ago. The early paintings were abstracts but the work always had a sense of landscape about it. The paintings turned toward realism and a fascination for the sea at a conjunction of events in the early 70 s. He quit his career as a graphic designer, spent two summers in Newfoundland and inherited a single reflex camera. He uses the camera as a compositional tool, a way of gathering detailed visual information. Intentionally remaining ignorant regarding the technical aspects of photography he states, it is not my goal to make a perfect photograph, which I can then copy into a painted image. As a painter I have learned that photographs are deceptive, providing either too much or too little information, often of a contradictory nature. The creative method involves manipulating that information by adding or subtracting or by combining two or more images. It s also a refining process that shapes a personal wonderment into a clearer, more powerful statement. Like many of us, he observes the degradation and destruction of the environment with growing alarm. We are quite possibly living in the twilight of the natural world as we have known it. In that regard, my work is an act of preservation. To preserve the natural world is to preserve a language of the wind and shifting light, of stillness, silence and space.
1 Night Cracker oil on canvas 91 x 117 (36 x 46 in)
2 Primal Light Pacific III oil on canvas 140 x 107 cm (55 x 42 in)
3 Pacific Twilight oil on canvas 112 x 140 cm (44 x 55 in)
4 Surf Solar oil on canvas 117 x 91 cm (46 x 36 in)
5 September Surf I oil on canvas 112 x 140 cm (44 x 55 in)
6 Lakelight III oil on canvas 117 x 79 cm (46 x 31 in)
7 September Surf II oil on canvas 112 x 140 cm (44 x 55 in)
8 Waters of a Northern Eden oil on canvas 107 x 122 cm (42 x 48 in)
9 Wave Image North oil on canvas 76 x 152 cm (30 x 60 in)
10 Seatangle oil on canvas 117 x 91 cm (46 x 36 in)
Born in 1938 and educated in Toronto, Ron Bolt has had over 70 solo exhibitions in public and commercial galleries from St. John s, Newfoundland to Victoria, British Columbia. He is represented in the permanent collections of public galleries across Canada and abroad including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England and the Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama, Japan. Bolt s work is concerned with the natural environment and fits most completely into what has been described as the Northern Romantic Tradition. His imagery of the sea and coastal regions have taken him to the three coasts of Canada, the Caribbean and Europe. In 2000 he was awarded the position as Artist in Residence at Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland and in 2002 he spent a month as guest artist of the U.S. National Park Service in the Mohave desert of southern California. International exhibitions include Canadian Printmakers at the Bronx Museum, New York, which traveled throughout the US and Mexico, the 39 th North American Print Exhibition, Boston and the International Biennial Print Exhibition, Taipei Museum of Fine Art, Taiwan. His paintings, drawings and prints have been acquired by private collectors around the world. Commissions include: a One Dollar Definitive Stamp for Canada Post, the Newmarket Court House and Laurentian University murals for the Government of Ontario and a large work for the Government of Canada at Canada House, Sydney, Australia. Publications include The Inner Ocean Merritt Publishing, 1980 and The Beat and the Still, 1990; a limited edition fine art book in collaboration with the Canadian writer Norman Levine. Bolt has served as board member and consultant for many Arts organizations including the founding board of Visual Arts Ontario and the Toronto City Hall Arts Advisory Board. He was elected to membership in the RCA in 1985 and served as its 27 th President from 2000 to 2002. He was awarded the Government of Canada 125 Medal in 1992. Ron Bolt was recently awarded the Queen s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2013 Albemarle Gallery MMXIII
ALBEMARLE