Ted Godwin RCA

Ted Godwin graduated from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and Art in 1955. He worked as an art director for TV and as a neon sign designer until 1964. He studied with Barnett Newman, John Ferren, Jules Olitski and Lawrence Alloway at the Emma Lake Artists Workshop from 1959 to 1965. Godwin has been exhibiting since 1955 and has had more than 60 solo exhibitions. He was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy in 1974. Ted Godwin received the Order of Canada in the summer of 2004 for his excellence in the field of visual art.

A member of the group of Regina painters later known as the Regina Five, Godwin broke onto the Canadian art scene with the group’s 1961 exhibition, Five Painters from Regina, at The National Gallery of Canada. The artist is renowned for his Tartan Series, Dying Orchids Series and large landscapes that explore the interactions of the river-edge. Paula Gustafson, a west coast curator, states "Like Godwin's robust persona, his paintings are a bold, full-colour synthesis of realism, abstract expressionism, and traditional European Romanticism… he may have finally perfected the ice-blue effect of light refracting on water over white gravel."

Godwin is also the author of Lower Bow: A Celebration of Wilderness, Art and Fishing (exhibition catalogue, 1992), and Ted Godwin: The Tartan Years 1967–1976 (exhibition catalogue, 1999).

Collections: The National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Canada Council Art Bank, Art Gallery of Hamilton, CBC, University of Regina, and the Confederation Art Centre. His works are in numerous private and corporate collections.