Ten Works from Our Permanent Collection

Bob Boyer
A Smallpox Issue, 1983
blanket, oil, rawhide

Bob Boyer grew up in Prince Albert and earned a bachelor of education degree from the Regina Campus of the University of Saskatchewan in 1971. He worked in a number of education, art and community positions, including doing community programming at the MacKenzie Art Gallery until the mid-70s. He then became a fine arts professor at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, where he also acted as the head of the Department of Indian Fine Arts. 

 

Boyer began his visual arts career painting portraits and landscapes, but he is best known for his painted blankets, completed between 1983 and 1995. Using flannel blankets as the painting surface, he combined elements of Northern Plains geometric design with personal symbols and contemporary references to colonialism, environmental destruction and Indigenous culture. He referred to these pieces as “blanket statements.” In October 1983, Boyer painted A Smallpox Issue, his first blanket. It was heralded as an important new direction that was political, narrative, abstract and traditional, and is considered one of the Saskatchewan Arts Board Permanent Collection’s treasured art works. Boyer passed away in 2004.

 

 

Wally Dion
Starblanket, 2006
printed circuit board, brass wire, acrylic paint, copper tubing

Wally Dion’s Starblanket is a First Nations star blanket fashioned from computer circuit boards. Dion recycles first world waste, using an iconic star pattern that references traditional Plains First Nations quilts and blankets. Playing with the concept of time and tradition, the piece stimulates discussion of how traditions are valued and interpreted within modern society. Its use of material and symbolism alludes to systems of connections and communication. The modern circuitry offers an updated representation of longstanding social networks, while also speaking to empowerment through technology within First Nations communities. 

 

Ann Harbuz
Richard Town, 1976
acrylic, ink on Masonite

Ann Harbuz spent much of her adult life in North Battleford. She did not start painting until she was in her 60s, but in a flurry of activity spanning 23 years, she produced more than 1,000 landscapes, still lifes and portraits. She was a self-taught artist; her works show little regard for formal or technical considerations and have been described as having a “child-like simplicity.” Instead, they focus on content and subject matter, such as home, family and nature. She used all kinds of media: canvas, paper, velvet, glass and plastic, as well as watercolour, oil, acrylic, pen, ink and even coffee and latex.

Her goal was to supplement her family’s photographic archive, and her work related to what she observed in her local environment, as well as to her childhood memories and Ukrainian heritage. Scenes of everyday life, chores, farms and celebrations feature prominently in her paintings, which represent a form of visual diary and function as “social landscapes.” The stories she tells celebrate the strength and ingenuity of pioneer women. Harbuz passed away in 1989.

 

Kaija Sanelma Harris
Framed Series No. 2, 2006
Swedish carpet wool, Canadian yarn, cotton, synthetic yarn

Kaija Sanelma Harris was born in Finland but has lived in Saskatoon long enough to think of it as home. Fibre work was an important part of Scandinavian culture when Harris was young. There was value attached to creating works which were functional, beautiful and unique.

While she has used many different textile techniques in her work, Harris chose weaving as her main medium, exploring double weaves in the past two decades. The visual impact of her tapestries is accomplished by combining imagery, structure, materials and finishing methods that influence the surface.

Framed Series No. 2 is part of a series called Colour Maps and has its roots in a visit Harris made to Northern Lake in Prince Albert National Park more than ten years ago. While there, she had many walks in the woody area by the shoreline. “It was a treat for the eye,” she said. Back in Saskatoon, she recorded her experience in yarn and began creating “colour maps” of other landscapes from memory. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dorothy Knowles
Fields in Summer, 1969
oil, charcoal on canvas

Dorothy Knowles initially had no plans to become an artist, studying biology at the University of Saskatchewan. When she graduated, a friend convinced her to enroll in a summer painting course at Emma Lake. She was hooked. She continued her education in painting at the University of Saskatchewan, going on to study in London, England. She married fellow renowned Saskatoon painter William Perehudoff in 1953.

Knowles is best known for her landscape paintings and has been referred to as “the matriarch of painting in Saskatchewan.” Weather permitting, she worked outdoors, using a van as a portable studio, at times producing finished paintings and at others sketches and photographs she later used in the studio. She once used a car breakdown on a road trip as an opportunity to whip out her watercolours and capture a splendid sunset.

Prairie valleys and the prairie and parkland near Saskatoon have been a recurrent theme in her art. American critic Clement Greenburg wrote, “…she was the only landscape painter I came across…whose work tended towards the monumental in an authentic way,” noting that her work was more successful than that of The Group of Seven in this regard.