Preview
Otto Rogers: Lit from Within
Runs until September 11
Nickle Arts Museum
Otto D. Rogers explores the landscape of his imagination in a new exhibition at the Nickle Arts Museum entitled Otto Rogers: Lit from Within.
Featuring 18 works that date from as early as 1961 and as recently as 2003, the show proves that, for more than four decades, Rogers has been able to deliver an artistic vision that resonates with integrity.
There are two important facts to consider about Rogers. He was born in Kerrobert, Saskatchewan in 1935, growing up on a wheat farm where the landscape ingrained itself on his mind’s eye. And later he adopted the Baha’i faith as a means to express his spirituality.
It’s clear both spiritual and physical forces play pivotal roles in his creations. Rogers’ landscapes are mostly meditations on, rather than depictions of, place, yet the wide-open view that all prairie dwellers feast on is still evident in many of these works.
Fall Frost Coming, painted in 1966, is a large canvas that features muted trees with soft edges. These calming beacons stand on a vast plain that welcomes the viewer’s eyes.
This former head of the art department at the University of Saskatchewan has, in a long and distinguished career, continued to move away from such recognizable forms to the use of more metaphorical imagery. In the recent past Rogers has turned to the Baha’i teachings for this direction as he attempts to create, not representations of reality, but sacred offerings that aspire to the highest possible ideals.
A curious counterpoint to the paintings is a metal sculpture Rogers created in 1966 called Standing Personage. It’s an amusing piece that is out of place in a show where the spiritual power of painting is on display.
Landscape Force, 2003 is an acrylic work with wood elements on canvas that combines the sensibilities of the prairie boy and spiritual traveller who has gone a long way in order to achieve landscape paintings that are "lit from within."
On September 3, Rogers will be speaking at the Nickle Arts Museum at noon in a talk entitled Composition in Art: The Exercised Intelligence of the Rational Soul. |
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