One of the most respected modernist painters in
Canada, Douglas Haynes has been recognized particularly for his
reflective response to historical styles mediated through the practice
of contemporary abstraction.
With Doug's "split diamond" works of the
late 1970s, he demonstrates a concern with reworking previous styles.
According to critic Karen Wilkin, these paintings represent a novel
reinterpretation of earlier post-painterly abstraction (Kenneth Noland,
Jules Olitski, Jack Bush) as a type of "portrait" through the
use of a central geometric device.
By the early 1980s, he had exhausted the potential of
the diamond and began to search for a new organizing principle for his
paintings. Doug's search eventually led him to the analytic cubism of
Picasso and Braque. In the paintings from this phase, he translates the
faceted surfaces of cubist paintings into a weave of rhythmic
"paint swipes" that knit together the surface of the canvas.
Doug was next inspired by a trip to Spain and a visit
to see the El Greco paintings in the Cathedral of Toledo. In his Toledo
Series and related works, including Paravicino III (1990), Doug allows
the individual paint swipes to become more assertive and to become
characters in their own right-abstract analogues of El Greco's dramatic
portraits of Christ and the apostles.
“The
reaction to [the art of] El Greco was certainly not for any reason of
looking for an idea, nor for the use of a style, nor was it
appropriation. It was the
recognition that concerns I had for a long time, combined with all the
explorations, technical and formal, found a forebear in El Greco.
He had patiently been waiting for me to catch up
(Douglas Haynes. The
Toledo Series: 2).”
Doug was born
in Regina, Saskatchewan, 1936. He studied at the Provincial
Institute of Technology and Art (now the Alberta College of Art and
Design) 1954-8 and the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, Holland 1960-1.
Doug taught at the University of Alberta, Department of Art and Design
for twenty-five years (1970-95). He now works full-time in his studio.
He
participated in numerous group exhibitions since 1963 to the present,
including: The
Fifth and Sixth Biennial of Canadian Painting: National Gallery of
Canada 1963, 1965; The Canadian Canvas: Time Life Touring Exhibition,
1975; Certain Traditions: Painting and Sculpture of Canada and Great
Britain, 1978; Abstraction x 4: Canada House, London England; Bonn, West
Germany; Paris, France, 1985; and The Development of Abstract Painting
in Canada: Calgary, Alberta, 1993.
He has
mounted many one man shows in public and private galleries including:
Atlantic Provinces Art Circuit, 1967; Glenbow Alberta Institute Calgary,
1974; Cubism Revisited: A Five Year Survey, Edmonton Art Gallery, 1985;
The Toledo Series, Edmonton, Calgary, Banff, Hamilton, 1992; Douglas
Haynes: 25 years, Edmonton Art Gallery, 2000
Doug’s work is found in many public, corporate, and
private collections in Canada and the United States, here are a select
number:
Public Collections: National Gallery of Canada;
Edmonton Art Gallery; Art Gallery of Ontario; City of Edmonton; Agnes
Etherington Art Centre, Kingston; Alberta Foundation for the Arts;
Canada Council Art Bank; Concordia University, Montreal; Confederation
Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown, P.E.I.; Glenbow Museum, Calgary;
Government of Canada, Department of External Affairs, Ottawa; University
of Alberta; University of Calgary; University of Lethbridge; Vancouver
Art Gallery.
“I
do not see why one should be restricted to one view or one scale.”
291 Film Company, Regina, Saskatchewan produced a
film, entitled Peace Athabasca Delta, with Doug in 2005.
The film is part of their Landscape as Muse Series for SCN
and Bravo TV.
"I want
more from art than to just be a visual thing. If it's just visual, then
I've been wasting my time. There's got to be some spiritual thing there
as well" (Douglas Haynes, 1998)
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