Christopher Pratt has died, casting a mysterious and magical aura over the landscape of Newfoundland and Labrador with works of international acclaim. He was 86 years old.
He died early Sunday morning, his family said in a statement.
“He died as he wanted, surrounded by family and friends at his 59-year-old home on the Salmonier River,” the family said in a statement.
He is survived by four children and another family. Acclaimed painter Mary Pratt, described in the family statement as her “best friend and at some point woman”, died in 2018.
“It’s a great loss to many. Canada has lost a great artist,” said Emma Butler, a friend of Pratt’s and founder of the Emma Butler Gallery in St. Louis. John’s.
Pratt was often considered one of Canada’s greatest painters throughout his long and successful career, earning him both the Order of Canada and the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador. His work is featured in coast-to-coast galleries, including the National Gallery of Canada.
His decades of painting and engraving focus on the landscapes and experiences of Newfoundland: the view of the sea, the snow placed on a dory upwards, arid stretches of the Trans-Canada Highway. With his characteristic meticulous style, Pratt transports viewers with his often strangely illuminated views to a territory that exists between the real and the surreal.
“There’s magic in his paintings,” said Tom Smart, director of the Beaverbrook Gallery in Fredericton and author of Christopher Pratt: Six Decades.
“It’s called a magical realist for a reason. You look at his paintings and it’s almost like they’re looking back at you.”
Winter at Whiteway, a 2004 painting by Pratt. (Christopher Pratt / Mira Godard Gallery)
That haunting look marked much of Pratt’s art.
“His paintings have a lot of depth,” Smart said. “You can appreciate the image; it’s painting a building or landscape that’s familiar to everyone, but when you start looking at it, you say, ‘Well, wait a minute, there are some things going on here.’
Pratt made no secret of the fact that his works edited the disorder of the world. It would remove stains and straighten lines to create complex and alternative versions of reality.
“Straight lines and precision and all that, control of my work, is just a façade,” Pratt told CBC Radio’s On The Go in 2018.
“Because my life and my thoughts and my anxieties and what is nothing but clean, controlled and orderly.”
Painting by Christopher Pratt from 2013, Argentia: The Ruins of Fort McAndrew: After the Cold War. Argentia, a former World War II U.S. military base on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula, was Pratt’s favorite place to visit and paint. (Christopher Pratt / Mira Godard Gallery)
From the Confederacy to the design of the flag
Pratt’s works give few easy answers. Instead, they reward those who want to spend time with them and what they say about their deep affection for Newfoundland and Labrador.
“He loved this place. He loved this wild, unpredictable and beautiful place,” Butler said.
“And he traveled it, and he painted it with love and reverence. And if you couldn’t see love and reverence in his paintings, then you were missing out on what he was saying.”
1998 oil painting by Pratt Benoit’s Cove: Sheds in Winter. Pratt often made road trips through Newfoundland and would include this fish plant in his route. (Christopher Pratt / The Rooms Collection)
That love led to an unusual honor, considering his lineage: Pratt was born in 1935, in the gray era of government after Newfoundland ceded its self-government status to the United Kingdom and functioned effectively as British territory until in the Confederation with Canada in 1949.
Both sides of Pratt’s family spread generations back in Newfoundland, and many were strongly opposed to joining Canada. Pratt became a Canadian at the age of 13 and often said he had vivid memories and associations with the pre-Confederate era.
Then, in 1980, with his artistic career in full swing, Pratt was chosen to design the provincial flag (until then, Union Jack had been doing the work).
Pratt used his outstanding work ethic, creating dozens of flag designs before deciding on what he still wants today, which contains subtle memories of the British, maritime and beothuk history of the place.
The flag was divisive on his arrival, and Pratt was sometimes ambivalent about it: he once described himself as a reluctant “show doctor” who accepted under pressure to help break a deadlock between the politicians in a design, but he was clear on one point. .
“I did the best I could,” he told CBC in 1980.
“I think the committee could have found a better designer, I don’t dispute that. But I would say modestly, they wouldn’t have found anyone who cared more about the province.”
The provincial flag of Newfoundland and Labrador, designed by Pratt, was unveiled on April 29, 1980. (The National / CBC Archives)
‘I love what I do’
Pratt spent most of his life on the east coast of Newfoundland, but soon left the province for higher education, choosing a pre-medical degree at Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB.
The medicine did not last. Pratt was attracted to the school’s fine arts department and fell under the spell of his first mentor and teacher, Alex Colville, whose style influenced Pratt’s.
Mount Allison also introduced Pratt to his future first wife, Mary, an immense talent for painting in his own right. Together, Colville and painter Tom Forrestall propelled the school of painting of magical realism, creating a force in Atlantic Canadian art that would define the national scene for decades.
With art titles from both Mount Allison and Glasgow School of Art in hand, the Pratts returned to Newfoundland and Christopher began his career seriously. His works were well received from the outset, and alongside curation and teaching, he was able to devote himself to his art, which he did prolifically for the rest of his life.
Pratt worked in many media, such as watercolor, which can be seen here in his 2004 painting Fall At My Place (Some Shadows On My House). (Christopher Pratt / Private Collection)
“I love what I do. I don’t consider it a job. I’ve never done it. It’s a rich and rewarding hobby in which I’m lucky enough to make a living, so far,” Pratt said in a 2015 interview. about his retrospective exhibition, The Places I Go, which focused on a defining aspect of his life and work: road trips to Newfoundland.
Pratt’s Pilgrimages
Pratt traveled the island often and extensively, resembling “a pilgrimage,” said Mireille Eagan, who curated The Places I Go in her role as curator of contemporary art at The Rooms, St. John’s Cultural Complex. which includes the provincial art gallery.
Eagan made two such trips with Pratt, accumulating thousands of miles through Newfoundland while searching for his muse.
As befits such a disciplined artist, his road trips were well-ordered. Eagan said he visited the same places every time, from his parents’ graves to the buildings he had painted to his favorite highway rest stops.
“He was telling me stories along the way. And every river we crossed, every tree that meant something to him, talked about it,” Eagan said.
“We will talk about the history of this province, which he knew intimately … It was important for him to remember this place. And he did it through his paintings.”
“If there’s one big type of theme in his paintings, it’s works that are images that are seen from the road,” Smart said.
Deer Lake: Junction Brook Memorial, a 1999 Pratt oil painting by Deer Lake Powerhouse, is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, a gift from David and Margaret Marshall. (Christopher Pratt / Mira Godard Gallery)
Trips included stops such as the Deer Lake Powerhouse, a majestic building of brilliant heights that became the subject of one of his best-known works, Deer Lake: Junction Brook Memorial.
“It’s such an extraordinary painting,” Smart said.
“You wonder why he focused his attention on this power plant and spent so much time painting it … but it gives me great, enormous satisfaction to look at it and travel through that landscape. Get lost in it, be afraid of that, too “.
The title of the painting hints at the memories of the wild, long-domesticated waterway for human use: its electricity still supplies the pulp and paper mill of nearby Corner Brook, with this subtle settlement one of the many times Pratt used his art to witness history. of his beloved province.
Denying that serious advantage, “a road trip with Christopher Pratt is quite fun,” Eagan said. They would listen to Frank Sinatra or jazz, and the human warmth behind so many winter paintings would shine.
“He was a very humble man. He may seem a little cold, but he is not. He was a humble and compassionate person,” he said.
Pratt was also a complex man who sought honesty and deep thought from friends and family, Smart said.
The Lynx, a 1965 screenprint by Pratt. (Christopher Pratt / Beaverbrook Art Gallery)
A “deeply personal” painter.
His family dynamics were infamously complex. Mary Pratt, who initially set aside her artistic career to support her husband and raise her four children — John, Anne, Barbara, and Ned — came to accept her immense talent for painting the everyday in the sublime.
The two divorced after decades of marriage, and Christopher remarried, but maintained an artistic connection and respect.
“Both Mary and Christopher told me they saw each other in excellence, artistic excellence and tremendous creativity,” Smart said.
“Throughout their careers, they worked closely together. Particularly at the end of their lives, they reconciled and had conversations that would influence each other’s artistic practice from a deep respect,” Eagan said. .
Trongate Abstract, a 2018 painting inspired by a devastating fire years before Pratt’s alma mater, …