Kenneth Lochhead

Ottawa-born Artist Kenneth Lochhead is best known for his bold abstract paintings, which garnered praise from the typically insular New York critics of the 1960s. The much decorated Lochhead died on Saturday after a long battle with cancer.

A dilapidated wood and glass building now sits on the shores of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon. It was designed by celebrated architect Clifford Wiens. But this modernistic little marvel fell on hard times, later inviting unflattering comparisons to a garden shed, an ice-fishing shack and even a garage, which it once was during some of its more unfortunate years.

The structure's greatest claim to fame was that it served for many years as the studio in tiny Balgonie, Sask., for Kenneth Lochhead, the Ottawa-born-and-bred artist who became part of the pioneering Regina Five group of painters in the 1960s and one of the biggest influences on generations of artists across Canada in the latter part of the 20th century.

Once fully restored, the building will, among other things, serve as a studio for artists in residence at Saskatoon's Mendel Art Gallery. The old studio will also be a shrine. Kenneth Lochhead will be there, in spirit, to offer the same wisdom he dispensed for decades while alive to the university students he taught in Regina, Winnipeg and Ottawa. Learn as much art history as possible, he was apt to lecture, because you can't be an artistic rebel without knowing what you are rebelling against.

Often a rebel himself, Lochhead, 80, died Saturday of cancer at his Ottawa home, surrounded by his family. His last words, before slipping into unconsciousness, were, his widow Joanne said: "I've gotta go; enjoy every second."

Lochhead certainly seemed to enjoy every second of his full life, whether painting, traipsing around his family cottage along the Gatineau River or mentoring students at the University of Ottawa, where he taught from 1975-89.

There was much more to Lochhead than art. He loved skating and, in his youth, made more than one round of the old Minto rink with none other than Olympic figureskating superstar Barbara Ann Scott. He also loved hockey (the Senators especially) and baseball (he followed the Lynx). Once, he was spotted at home so caught up in a game on Hockey Night in Canada, he was wearing skates and waving a hockey stick.

Wayne Gretzky and Picasso were both Lochhead's heroes. His love of hockey and painting were sometimes combined. He delighted in painting group portraits of hockey teams in figurative and abstract styles. Some of those works were displayed in his two last major art exhibitions, both last year. One was at Regina's MacKenzie Art Gallery, a place he helped found, and the other at the Carleton University Art Gallery, which has vast holdings of Lochhead's works on paper.

Lochhead was, above all, a loved and respected man, a true gentleman, the kind of person who, during the past few years, only offered smiles publicly although he was fighting a long, painful battle with cancer.

"He's got a light about him," says Kate Davis, director of the MacKenzie. Adds Mela Constantinidi, director of the Ottawa Art Gallery: "He was an energetic and warm person."

Mr. Lochhead was generous with his time and with his art, donating both in abundance. The first painting he donated to the Carleton University Art Gallery, a geometric abstract called Blue Accent, 1967, was on exhibition in a group show titled Signs of Wonder: Discovering the Collection on the very day he died. The painting, one of dozens of Lochhead works at Carleton, will still be on the wall July 27 when an informal memorial will be held at the gallery in his honour. There will be no funeral service.

Kenneth Lochhead was born in Ottawa in 1926. His father was a federal government scientist, his mother a musician. They encouraged their children to embrace the arts. Kenneth chose art; brother, Douglas, became a poet. Kenneth illustrated some of Douglas's poetry books.

Kenneth studied art at Queen's University and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he fell in love with the masterpieces contained in what we now call the Barnes Collection. In 1950, at 24, he became the director of the visual art department at the Regina campus of the University of Saskatchewan. The university didn't pay much attention to art in those days, allowing young Lochhead to do much as he pleased. Young Lochhead took off like a rocket.

During the next 15 or so years, he turned Saskatchewan into one of North America's most exciting art locations, with summer seminars at Emma Lake attended by the likes of Barnett (Voice of Fire) Newman and the U.S.'s top critic, Clement Greenberg.

Mr. Lochhead also helped form what became known as the Regina Five group of abstract painters. These five Saskatchewan artists included Mr. Lochhead, Ron Bloore, Ted Godwin, Art McKay and Doug Morton. Only Mr. Godwin and Mr. Bloore are living.

Their works were exhibited in the National Gallery, across Canada, the United States and beyond. The normally ethnocentric New York critics who had never heard of Saskatchewan beforehand offered praise. These five young upstarts all went on to help reshape the Canadian artistic landscape.

Mr. Lochhead was chiefly interested in exploring colour, whether in abstract (his most celebrated works), surrealistic or representative art. Styles of art were merely tools, a means to an end. ("Representation and abstraction are simply different aspects of the artist's vocabulary," he once said.)

The artist's repertoire also included publicly commissioned murals at Ottawa's Lester B. Pearson Building and the Gander Airport in Newfoundland, among others.

He also loved doing caricatures of political figures. His Jean Chretien and John Diefenbaker are devilishly wicked.

Lochhead's long contributions to the Canadian art world resulted in various honours, including the Order of Canada, an honorary doctor of laws at the University of Regina and, just this year, the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts for lifetime achievement.

"He has been called eclectic, eccentric, fantastic -- characteristics which only begin to define the singularity and versatility of his art," curator Anna Babinska wrote as part of a tribute to Lochhead upon receiving the Governor General's Award.

Babinska, who also curated Mr. Lochhead's last exhibition at Carleton, ended her tribute by saying: "In Rome, in 1959, surrounded by the weight of an ancient civilization, the young artist put it simply: 'We can only express what we are.' Ever since then, through deeply felt and personal painting, that is the way he celebrates life."