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With the maturation of a new style epitomized by the "colourless" 2005, March 13 - 28, DC#47 (left) which adorned the cover of the catalogue of the Art Gallery of Peterborough's show Bloore at 80, and an exciting future motif indicated by his painting July 29, 2005, #1 (right), which also hung in that show and is now in the AGP collection, things were really moving. But towards what?
Starting to work in the new Spadina studio at the end of '02, Bloore felt his mission to be the development of an "old man's style." The painting that pointed that way was 2002, July 1st (right), which is now at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina. The brown works of '04-'05, of which he was duly proud, were clearly how he would need to paint technically but stylistically the direction still had to change.
Words like power and content, ambition and ambiguity were common in discussions about painting with Bloore especially when the extra-large 8-by-8's were underway in '88 - '90 (left) and there were Hokusai monographs open on his desk. The books now on his desk were about the late, great works of Phillip Guston and Pablo Picasso, old men railing against decrepitude and death.
"I am relaxed and not ashamed of what I've done. I think that's the major
point."
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