“Susan Ross (artist)”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Susan Andrina Ross CM (3 June 1915 – 5 January 2006), was a printmaker, illustrator and painter from Port Arthur, Ontario who is best known for her portraits of Native and Inuit peoples. Her work is valuable both for its artistry and for its historical significance since she captured many images of a passing way of life.^[1]^[2]^[3] In 2002 she was awarded the Order of Canada in the Visual Arts.

Early life

Susan Ross was one of four girls born to Colonel and Mrs. Harry Ruttan in Port Arthur Ontario. Ross showed an interest in drawing at a very young age and was encouraged by her mother to take art lessons. Her art education continued through high school where Ross began studying anatomy. An important and early influence in her life was her uncle, the documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty, who is best known for his film Nanook of the North. Flaherty offered Ross an example of a person who was well traveled and had lived with, and documented the lifestyle of, the Inuit people. Flaherty also provided Ross with the means to attend the Ontario College of Art in Toronto in 1933. In 1938, in the last term of her fourth year, Ross left before graduating to marry Jim Ross, a Port Arthur lawyer, and later a judge,^[4] with whom she eventually had four children.

Work

Ross continued her love of portraiture, painting friends and neighbors' children but eventually began to focus her efforts and inspiration on First Nations people after meeting an Ojibwa woman named Emily and seeing First Nations wild-rice harvesters at Whitefish Lake. Soon after the Second World War, Ross had met Sheila Burnford^[6] the author of The Incredible Journey, an animal saga that Walt Disney adapted for the cinema. Ross and Burnford would subsequently travel extensively together. Norval Morrisseau invited Ross to Gull Bay and Armstrong to paint while he collected legends and songs and then subsequently to Big Trout Lake and finally to Sandy Lake. It was in Sandy Lake that Ross met Carl Ray and painted his portrait among many others. Ross and Morrisseau remained friends for many years although their friendship eventually became strained by Morrisseau's legendary drinking binges - a Morrisseau sketch entitled "Susan" depicting their friendship is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

Ross took an etching workshop with Jo Manning in 1967 and acquired a printing press in 1969. She then began producing high quality etchings and, drawing on the rich array of sketches obtained on her various trips, she was able to reflect and structure many of these images more rigorously in the studio. Being the "right person at the right place in a very dramatic time in Canadian history",^[7] she was able to capture and document a period of rapid change in many northern communities. In many of these images "the human toll is recorded in the faces of individuals and in the cumulative details of daily existence".^[6]

Ross illustrated Sheila Burnford's books "Without Reserve" and "One Woman's Arctic" which document Burnford and Ross' travels, as well as Penny Petrone's book "Fairy Tales of Isabella Valancy Crawford" and Jocelyn Square's "SHA-KO-KA". Her works were also featured on several covers of the Canadian magazine "The Beaver". Ross was instrumental in the mounting of the first art shows for both Carl Ray and Daphne Odjig and had "served as a mentor, a source of encouragement, and a source of financial assistance to numerous artists".^[8] Ross stopped painting at age 85 having "lost the urge to do it".^[9]

Solo exhibitions

1984 Thunder Bay National Exhibition Center and Center for Indian Art, Thunder Bay, Ontario

Group exhibitions

1965 Northwestern Ontario Art Association, Port Arthur, Ontario, traveling exhibition

1967 Paintings of a Province, Art Institute of Ontario for the Centennial of Canadian Confederation, traveling exhibition

Collections

References

1. ^Susan Ross "Painting is a Way of Life"- A Retrospective Exhibition, Thunder Bay Art Gallery June 3-July 17, 1994.
2. ^Beverly Rasporich, Western Place/Women's Space. Compact Disc. University of Calgary. 2001.
3. ^{{cite web |url=http://sargentandson.com/book-of-memories/1725691/Ross-Susan/service-details.php |title=Susan Ross |work=Book of Memories |publisher=Sargent and Son Ltd}}
4. ^¹{{cite book |title=A dictionary of Canadian Artists |last=MacDonald |first=Colin S |volume=Volume 7 |year=1990 |ISBN=0-919554-19-9}}
5. ^Conversation with Janet Clark 6 October 1992
6. ^¹Images of the North - Etchings by Susan Ross - curated by Elizabeth McLuhan 1984
7. ^Interview with Elizabeth McLuhan 1992
8. ^Speech by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson 2002
9. ^{{cite news |url=http://www.wawataynews.ca/node/10146 |newspaper=Wawatay News |date=October 3, 2002 |title=Artist Ross awarded Order of Canada: Documented images from Big Trout Lake, Sandy Lake |volume=Volume 29 |issue=No. 20 }}{{Dead link|date=June 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=no }}