BC/Canadian Artist
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| Born in Winnipeg in 1924; moved to North Vancouver at age 11 where he began to study painting and piano with his father H.H. Burrell. After high school ‘Arnie’ played the drums professionally – jazz drumming in clubs in Vancouver and environs, as well as south of the border. In the 1940s he saw the world via the RCAF, the barque Pamir, the Merchant Marine. He went to Mexico in the late ‘40s and returned to Vancouver via New York City. | He entered the Vancouver School of Art – now the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design – in 1952. He graduated in 1956, his primary awards being the first Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation Scholarship – the only time it was awarded for both painting and graphics – and the Emily Carr Scholarship (granted only for 20 years). Taught by Shadbolt, Binning, Amess, Aspell, Smith, Fisher. |
The Fifties
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| After graduation he trusted his deep instinct that as France had been there for Cézanne, British Columbia was there for Burrell. This Canadian painter returned to the Queen Charlottes and Port Simpson, the Skeena and the Nass and traveled throughout the wild Interior, painting anything and anyone that magnetized him (including, with their permission, the Metlakatla’s burial rites). | He worked primarily in oils (glazing) but also graphics – conté, charcoal, pencil, inks - silk screening, gouache, egg tempera, etc.; developed his techniques, finishes, media; a few small sculptures in bronze and papier maché, including his whimsical ‘Wampus Burds’. |
The Sixties
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| By the early 1960s the teaching initiatives of the BC artist were requested and supported by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria via Canada Council grants. He instructed in many Vancouver Island centres, both groups and individuals. He set up the first art school in Nanaimo(1961/62), had numerous successful shows of his own work, acquiring recognition and assets (an Island farm) by the mid 1960s, was still winning awards at juried shows. | However
teaching had become too demanding and he started having serious misgivings…
He sensed the danger of self-betrayal
in the lure of renown. He did not wish to sacrifice integrity to deadlines
just to stock shows, in spite of the monetary rewards. |
The Seventies
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the mid-1970s, Burrell sold the farm, moving into a shared space in an
affluent area near Victoria – but this didn’t work for him.
The BC painter felt stultified, expressed through a tormented series of
oil pastels: rooms without exit, faceless figures of impotent potential.
Prior to the move he had been experimenting with form and colour, cultivating
his critical faculties and needed isolation to pursue it all. |
He couldn’t bear to leave Vancouver Island, and happened upon a small erstwhile church in lovely Maple Bay – which he bought and lived in, working there for the rest of his life. He was able to focus, to continue experimenting, to achieve effects that pushed him ever more profoundly into the work. He was involved in shows in the 1970s, but often didn’t appear at them himself . Nor did he notify past patrons of his new address. He taught advanced and serious students only, holding well received week-long outdoor seminars in the summer. |
The Eighties
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| By
the early 1980s he was no longer teaching and would not participate even in group shows with friends. He endeavoured to avoid distraction but he sold privately to those who tracked him down. |
Burrell continued to test himself with intriguing images he saw in the corner of his inner eye, latterly starting an entire series of abstracts on special paper which reacted with the oil medium, unlike anything he had tried before. |
Nineteen-Ninety
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His final works were a culmination of all he had acquired, known and created from deep within his being – powerful, reverberant images of the land and what it was and what it has become. Yet his lascivious colours belie defeat. He meant these works to be an extended new series, but cancer cancelled his plans in early 1991 and he passed on in late spring. For forty years Arnold Burrell, a Canadian artist, supported himself painting at a time of cultural crossroads and an eruption of artistic articulation: the second half of the 20th century. |
Whether figure or landscape, his works illuminate the chaos and connectedness of life's essence, the continuity of past through future. They reveal passion, vitality, strength, faith, understanding, knowledge and Burrell’s unique visionary gift. He did not keep records of
the disposition of his work. Two were purchased for the Art Gallery
of Greater Victoria and one for the Provincial Collection of BC. I have
tracked down a few hundred, but there are still many, many hundreds
more in North America and perhaps Europe. |
Information from any who knew him, were taught by him or know the whereabouts of any of his work would be appreciated, as would comments or questions. Please email E. Mackay, biographer (sumwhere@shaw.ca) |