Opening Reception: Thursday, March 7, 6-8pm
Nicholas Metivier Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of watercolour paintings and engravings by Ann MacIntosh Duff. The exhibition will open on March 7th and run until March 30th with an opening reception on Thursday, March 7th. This is Ann MacIntosh Duff’s second solo exhibition at the gallery.
Ann MacIntosh Duff specializes in the medium of watercolour, painting landscapes, still lifes and everyday events in her characteristically whimsical and expressive style. She paints from memory rather than observation - a surprising fact given her attention to details such as the grass cloth wallpaper in her living room and the pattern of a hand mirror hanging on her kitchen wall. The personal items she recalls in her paintings are at once introspective and universally symbolic. Binoculars, cameras and telescopes allude to different ways of seeing the world.
This exhibition presents a survey of MacIntosh Duff’s work, highlighting her two sources of inspiration - the energy of the city and the tranquility and profound beauty of Georgian Bay, Ontario. Until recently, MacIntosh Duff spent each summer at her cabin on an island in Georgian Bay, painting from her boathouse studio. Her landscapes are often depicted at dusk and evening, her favorite time of day for its mystery and possibility. It is also her chosen time to work, when there are fewer interruptions.
When you make a watercolour, it’s sort of like a dance between the wet paper and the paintbrush in your hand. You have to be very strong to do it. You have to run from one end of the room to the other, run back, take a look at what you’ve done and decide what you have to do. You have to leave what you have on the wet paper – which is doing things on its own – see how it’s carrying and run back again to stop it.
– Ann MacIntosh Duff
Born and raised in Toronto, Ann MacIntosh Duff’s career began in the 1940s. In 1952, MacIntosh Duff gained membership to the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour (CSPWC) where she remained an active member for thirty years. In 1959, she began working with Douglas Duncan at the Picture Loan Society, one of the most influential galleries in Canada at the time which also showed works by David Milne, Harold Town, Bertram Brooker and Paul-Émile Borduas. She exhibited there until Duncan’s death in 1968. In 2007, the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery held, To Love and To Cherish, a retrospective of MacIntosh Duff’s work.
