PERMANENT COLLECTION

JAMES GORDANEER

NATIONALITY: Canadian

DATES: 1933-2016

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born in Toronto, Canada, in 1933, James Gordaneer painted in oil, acrylic, and watercolour from the 1950s until his death in 2016. 

Gordaneer’s works were characterized by rich colours and abstract figures. His Heads series (2006) portrayed numerous real and imagined figures in large-scale, vivid colours, while his Circus series (1987) captured the energy and life of acrobats, clowns and performing animals. His work is also renowned for its images of bodacious abstract nudes, impressionist landscapes, horses, wrestlers and steam locomotives, for which Gordaneer held a lifelong passion.

As an expressionist painter, teacher, and avid follower of the Abstract Expressionism of de Kooning and Gorky, among others, Gordaneer has exerted considerable influence on the Canadian cultural landscape. Visiting museums in Europe also contributed to his maturation as an artist. In Canada, Gordaneer found many other sources of inspiration, including Jack Wise for calligraphic line, Joseph Kyle for hard-edge colour-field, and Raymond Lorens for topographical theory (which Gordaneer adopted in his 1990s work). Despite this wide variety of artistic models, he has established himself as a unique practitioner with a distinct subjective point of view. He has been called a Post-Modernist at heart — like Alex Colville, Paterson Ewen, and Ivan Eyre — but has learned over time to populate his paintings of people and ordinary objects with a rich collection of allusions and lyrical elements.

Over his 60-year career, he produced thousands of oils, watercolours and drawings, many of which have been shown in public and private galleries across Canada and internationally, including at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Albright Knox Art Museum in Buffalo, NY, as well as the Centre Culturel Canadien, Paris France, and at Canada House, London, UK.. His paintings are held in numerous public collections across Canada, including the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, the McMichael Canadian Collection, the Peterborough Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Canada Council Art Bank, , the Sarnia Art Gallery, the Penticton Art Gallery, Prince George Art Gallery, the Michael Williams Collection (University of Victoria), and the Homer Watson Gallery, as well as in collections curated by Imperial Oil, Crown Life, Queen’s University, Dow Chemical, Esso and hundreds of private collectors.