Nova Scotia's Newest Art Gallery

Rod Mackay is pleased to announce consignment of ten acrylic paintings completed this year to this new enterprise.

The GRAND OPENING RECEPTION is Thursday, October 4, 2007, from 3 pm until 5 pm. Those interested in attending must RSVP by calling 530-3060.

Ordinary Hours will be Wednesday through Saturday, 11:30 - 5:00 pm.

"Lunenburg Forever!"

Rod's representational paintings were last seen in a one-man show at Manuge Galleries, Halifax, 1987. Since then, he has been painting up a storm in New Brunswick; but he and his wife, Ruth Brown, moved back to these more pictorial surroundings a year and a half ago. You are cordially invited to take a look at his new work at this gallery or through our on-line gallery, which is linked at the right near his photo.

It was never all sweetness and light for Lucy Jarvis

University types are always struggling for reputation and physical space so Lucy had to be protective of her Art Centre and that seems to have been a wearisome business for her. I saw her again at summer school in 1953 but the next year she took a sabbatical to study in France. She took her nephew Mark Connell with her and they were there at the time of the student uprisings in Paris. She kept a connection with the Art Centre but a Canada Council Grant allowed her to escape to Europe and avoid the day-to-day annoyances of university faculty life. When she returned to Canada she severed the university connection and began painting full time from a little cottage at Pembroke Dyke near Yarmouth. Someone at U.N.B. had the good sense to bring her back to Fredericton for a retrospective on the 45th year anniversary for the Art Centre in 1985. She never interested in self promotion so her reputation remained largely local.

She was co-owner of a fishing boat skippered by Vernon Thompson of Yarmouth and shared her life and home with Helen Wells who was also a painter of some note. Wells died in 1983 and Lucy crossed over in 1985 in her 89th year. She is buried at Saint John, New Brunswick.

Her cottage can be seen on the web at yarmouth.org and is now owned by my long-time friend, Mark Connell. He and his brother both own good collections of her work as does Mark's sister Dr. Lucy Jarvis (Connell) Dyer of Fredericton. Lucy's sketch books and letters are archived at U.N.B. but her Art Centre has not fared as well. Funding for it was cut by the university in 2003 althouigh I belkieve it struggles on.

Lucy Jarvis in her Van Gogh period

I did not study under Lucy while at Teacher's College but did take a course in "Child Art" in Fredericton under Sinclair Healey then freshly graduated from Mount Allison University. In the old days Teachers' College graduated received provisional teaching certificates that could only become permanent after taking summer school course at U.N.B. I jumped directly out of "Normal School" into U.N.B. Summer School in 1952. One of the courses I took that year was also concerned with children's art and was presented by Dr. Carl Stoor a psycologist with minimal artistic skills. The interesting thing that year is the fact that I shared quarters with Fritz Brandtner in the Lady Beaverbrrok Residence. Got more out of that artistically than from the course I was taking. He suggested I sit in on some of the life drawing sessions being conducted by Lucy. I did that, free of charge but without credit.

I Love Lucy

Here is another Lucy Jarvis from the Lucy Jarvis Room.

Lucy was a great supporter of other artists and while there was never anything approaching an artist in residence program at staid U.N.B. she did manage to bring in Fritz Brandtner, Goodridge Roberts and others to beef up the summer school humanities program. She also did what she could for her students and she and Madge Smith hung John Maxwell's first show fior him at the gift shop just before Christmas in 1951.

Here is a Lucy Jarvis painting

My first art teacher, Thomas Acheson Junior, was an excellent instructor but decidely not a painter in his own right. Lucy's work on display at Madge Smith's place was a revelation in terms of her unstudied style. Those were of course, pre-photo days(no colour film and no cameras worthy of the name). In those prehistoric times no one would ever care to be described as a "photo-realist" In point of fact, Tom had always cautioned that the "fag-ends" were important since paintings should always leave something to the imagination.

Lucy Jarvis

Lucy was a bit younger than this when I met her at Madge Smith's gallery and gift shop in downtown Fredericton in 1951 and 1952. I was in town attending Teachers' College. As a sixteen year old I had little interest in that profession, but my parents has insisted that I get out there and do something.

I learned that Lucy had worked at a number of mundane jobs in Fredericton before teaming up with another budding artist, Pegi Nicol MacLeod. The two of them conspired with Margaret MacKenzie, wife of the University of New Brunswick's President to turn the derelict university observatory building into an art centre. During the war years from 1939 until 1946 taught art here and at the Provincial Normal School (later Teachers' College) and traveled the road to self sufficiency by taking up a rural circuit distributing National Film Board productions to the outback. When the war ended the university belatedly recognized Lucy's contributions by making her a full faculty member and Director of Art. She kept this position until 1960. By the time I came into her realm scientists had reclaimed the old observatory building and the U.N.B. Art Centre was shifted into a quonset hut at the back of the campus.

The Lucy Jarvis Room

The current owners of this home rescued it from the wrecker's ball and restored it as a four-and-a-half star inn. Lucy Jarvis had been born in Toronto in 1896, the eldest of the children of Edward harris and his wife Kate Agnes Harris. Iy was as a child growing up in Yarmouth that Lucy was introduced to the post-Crayola world. She fancied it very much and established a studio for herself on the second floor during her teen years. She added to her knowledge of the subject when her family shipped her off to Havergal Ladies College in Toronto. She graduated in 1914 but it was another decade before she took full formal training at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Edward William Jarvis and his wife, Kate Agnes Harris.

came to live in this home located at the head of the water in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Educated at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton he worked as a banker In Toronto but also had postings throughout Maritime Canada. He was manager of the Yarmouth branch and raised five children in this large "cottage" overlooking the salt water.

We arrived for a one night stay in thick o' fog so suggest you look in on the following web page for a much more representative image of the place.

http://www.harboursedge.ns.ca/

I Drink Moxie