Video: The World of Little Things Mary Pratt: 50 Years of Painting in Large-Scale Retrospective
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Mary Pratt, who turned 78 this year, is considered one of Canada's finest realist painters. She was already married to famous Canadian artist Christopher Pratt and was raising four children when painting entered her life. At the time, the family lived in a tiny village on the south coast of Newfoundland. Pratt began painting in oils and sketching everyday objects and scenes from everyday life, working in almost complete isolation from the outside world.
“I didn’t know how to drive, so I couldn’t put the children in the car and go for a drive. So I either stayed at home or made sure that they did not drown in the river, - the artist recalls. - So I cooked and cleaned and ironed and did everything that needed to be done. But the world itself came to me. He just pounced on me. Creativity was almost an erotic experience for me. Like everything related to the creation of a child."
The world that pounced on Pratt consisted of jewel-like jars of jam cooling on the kitchen table, raw gutted chicken, moose carcasses hanging over the porch, and the remains of a family dinner.
“Her paintings are equally beautiful, compelling and disturbing,” says Catherine Mastin, director of the Windsor Art Gallery, which recently opened Pratt's large retrospective exhibition.
“We're just starting to understand who she is,” explains Mastin. "Her work is about living in a remote village, being on her own, the only female artist in the area, and working side by side with a much more famous painter at the time - her husband, Christopher Pratt."
According to Timothy Long, curator of another gallery where Pratt exhibits, although her still lifes consist of simple everyday objects, they become a symbol of the deepest human experiences.
“A wedding, parting, all life experiences and, in particular, the richness of colors, the beauty of color and light. She throws it all in your face,”says Long. “It’s not so easy to distance yourself. A piece of raw cod on plastic film, if you will, will stir up the soul and remind of the hidden cruelty, the primitive basis of our existence."
Pratt says that the preparation for the exhibition has given her conflicting emotions. On the one hand, the sight of a huge and successful work done over 46 years cannot but bring a feeling of inner satisfaction, on the other hand, it leads to sad thoughts. The artist began to have health problems that no longer allow her to paint in the rhythm to which she is accustomed. Her vision is deteriorating, and she is worried that soon she will not be able to see what she is drawing:
- I am afraid that in a sense for me this is the last point, because when I look at this retrospective and understand that there are twice as many paintings, maybe even three times as many, I think: “Well, you did it."
But then she remembers a young woman who recently came to visit:
- I knew her as a child, and she came to me to sign a book and brought me a large bouquet of white roses. And she was delicious! Her face appears to be perfect and her black hair was pulled back in a wide white ribbon and she sat on my couch in her soft, ruffled skirt at her hips and her toenails were bright red. And, for the first time in a long time, I really wanted to write it. Maybe I will call her and she will come again.
Nowadays, with the advent of fashion for hyperrealism, the still life genre is experiencing a new birth. One of the adherents of this trend, Jason de Graaf, like Mary Pratt, is fascinated by the play of light, glare and reflections on glass and metal surfaces of household utensils.
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