INTO the ARCTIC: Tour Companion Booklet
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INTO THE ARCTIC Cory Trépanier’s Impassioned Vision of Canada’s Far North Over 50 Paintings • 3 Films • 1 Remarkable Experience Produced by David J. Wagner L.L.C. Companion Booklet to the Into The Arctic Prospectus 4 Cory Trépanier’s INTO THE ARCTIC A traveling museum exhibition of Canadian Arctic oil paintings by Cory Trépanier Produced by David J. Wagner L.L.C. Member of the American Alliance of Museums and International Council of Museums 414.221.6878 [email protected] davidjwagnerllc.com Exhibition artwork, video journals, photographs, and more at: www.intothearctic.ca 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction...............................................................................................................5 Glacierside at Embassy of Canada in Washington D.C. ................6 Glacierside: One of Four Pillars of the Collection.............................7 Great Glacier: Centrepiece of the Exhibition .....................................9 Testimonials..............................................................................................................11 Artist Bio................................................................................................................... 12 Artist Statement.....................................................................................................13 On Painting the Arctic.......................................................................................14 Painting With Arctic Peoples.........................................................................15 Artist Statement of Environmental Ideology.......................................16 Artist’s Aspirations...............................................................................................17 Dans l’Arctique, Cory Trépanier.................................................................18 Selected Works From The Exhibition......................................................19 Preliminary Inventory List...............................................................................20 Artwork by Subject............................................................................................22 Into The Arctic Films..........................................................................................24 Into The Arctic: The Last Chapter Expedition Map.......................25 3 4 INTO THE ARCTIC Introduction The mission of the Into The Arctic traveling museum exhibition is to passionately engage, educate and inspire others with the beauty of the Canadian Arctic, one of the most fragile regions of our planet, through the creative vision of artist Cory Trépanier’s expedition-born Arctic paintings and films. The Canadian Arctic. The last great wilderness of North America and maybe even our planet. Spanning 1.5 million square kilometers, it’s a land of untamed extremes. Few ever see what lies beyond the Inuit communities that dot the land. Even fewer are artists, bringing their oil paints with them into some of of the most remote and wild corners of our planet. It is this magnificent wilderness that Cory Trépanier has explored and painted firsthand. Four extensive painting expeditions have led to one of the most unprecedented body of oil paintings to be created from Canada‘s north of our time. A time in which his canvases serve to preserve a changing landscape for future generations. Similar to historic artists Thomas Moran, Frederic Church, Tom Thomson and some members of the Group of Seven, Trépanier’s art documents landscapes never before seen by the vast majority of the public, places never before captured on canvas. His films add another dimension to Into The Arctic, allowing audiences to experience rarely seen wilderness through his unique artistic perspective. Trépanier’s Arctic explorations bring an intimate sense of the northern landscape to his paintings, enriched further through encounters with early Arctic exploration, wildlife and traveling with the Inuit. The following presents the deeper context of Into The Arctic, illustrating that Trépanier’s canvases tell many stories beyond the layers of paint and aesthetic appeal of his compositions. 5 GLACIERSIDE On loan to the Embassy of Canada in Washington D.C. 2015 - 2016 From left to right: Katherine Baird, Minister: Congressional, Public and Intergovernmental Affairs, Mr. Denis Stevens, Deputy Ambassador of Canada to the US, Cory, Janet, and Dr. Kirk Johnson, Sant Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Cory with Gary Doer, Ambassador to the USA With senator of Maine Angus King and his wife 6 Talking about glacier formations Cory and Glacierside INTO THE ARCTIC Glacierside: One of Four Pillars of the Collection Glacierside is one of the “Pillars” of the exhibition, four large paintings from each “geographic corner“ of the Arctic. Most paintings in the exhibition have stories that make them uniquely engaging, often connecting history and place. This is Glacierside’s story. Henrietta Nesmith Glacier, Quttinirpaaq National Park, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut. Canadian High Arctic 30” x 96” (2’6” x 8’) Early Canadian Arctic exploration has shared its rich history with American explorers since men first made footprints on the northern tundra. This evidence is clearly brought to light in the subject of Trépanier’s Glacierside painting. At the top of North America, 500 miles shy of the north pole on Ellesmere Island, Trépanier set up his easel in the middle of a polar desert that receives less than an inch of rain per year. Fighting wind-blown sand and keeping a watchful eye for Polar Bears and Arctic Wolves, he laboured in an effort to capture the dramatic and curvaceous Henrietta Nesmith Glacier on canvas, a glacier whose sheer mass of ice creates its own cold weather system. Melt runoff flowed past him through a vast network of braided rivers, winding their way to Lake Hazen, the largest lake lying north of the Arctic Circle in North America. An impressive and moving scene to be certain, but adding to Trépanier’s experience, and reflected in the name of the Glacier itself, lies a tale of Arctic exploration, disaster and love. During the first International Polar Year, the rush to conduct scientific research in the Arctic began. While research was indeed at hand, a secondary, underlying motivation sent men to abandon the comfort of home for the unknown, uncharted and raw north… the quest for the North Pole. Leading the way for the United States was First Lieutenant Adolphus W. Greely and his Lady Franklin Bay Expedition. With a crew of 25 men, Greely and the USS Proteus made their way up Nares Strait between Greenland and Canada, where they disembarked in Lady Franklin Bay on Ellesmere Island. They landed on August 11, 1881, with enough provisions for two summers, and the Proteus returned home. Land excursions followed, attempts to reach the North Pole took place, and scientific research ensued. 7 Maps were created, features were named and unknown land became a little better known. All did not go according to plan however, and when supply ships failed to return two years in a row due to ice conditions, a desperate attempt was made to head south in the crew’s small boats. They found a small cache of supplies that had been dropped off at Cape Sabine, but only enough for forty days. By now it was October, and the crew was stranded in the High Arctic, with summer giving way to a harsh and black winter to come. Their shelter: their small boats turned upside down. By spring, only seven men were still clinging to life. Most died a slow death of starvation, freezing while in their sleep next to the other men. Rumours of cannibalism plagued the expedition for years to come. But somehow Adolphus Greely himself survived. And that happened only because of his wife back at home, who insisted tenaciously that a rescue mission be mounted, when others thought there was no hope. The sheer remoteness and harshness of the Arctic seemed to render the idea of such an exercise as useless. Mrs. Greely however would not settle for the loss of her husband in the Arctic and thus four ships made their way north once again, arriving on June 22, 1884. In her honour, the stunning glacier in Trépanier’s painting was named by Adolphus after his wife... Henrietta Nesmith Glacier. Arctic regions explored and painted by Cory Glacierside painting location Canada United States 8 INTO THE ARCTIC Great Glacier: Centrepiece of the Exhibition At 15 feet wide, Great Glacier is one of the largest canvases ever painted of the Canadian Arctic. Coronation Fiord, Baffin Island, Nunavut, Eastern Canadian Arctic 66” x 180” (5’5”x 15’). Below: 16” wide study for Great Glacier Baffin Island is the fifth largest island in the world, remotely situated in the Arctic Archipelago in Canada’s north. It’s a land that knows no time. This is where Trépanier began Great Glacier, the centrepiece of Into The Arctic. At 15 feet wide, Great Glacier is not only the most expansive canvas of the Into The Arctic collection, but quite possibly the single largest landscape painting in history to be created from Canada’s north. It’s large size matches the artist’s desire to share his experience on the land, where he was overwhelmed by the sheer scale and beauty encountered across the Arctic. In particular, he wanted to create one painting for the collection that could encapsulate that experience and immerse the viewer into the Arctic when standing before it, thus sharing the sense of awe he felt while painting the study on location. It was during his travels with Inuit guide Billy