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A Summary Biography
And a Selection of Portrait Photos
Ron Bloore was born near Toronto in 1925. At the University of Toronto he studied Art and Archeology and wrote about ancient Chinese bronzes in 1949. He did post-graduate studies in New York at NYU in the early fifties. He finished his MA at Washington University and went to the Courtauld Institute in London and Paris to pursue a PHD, but in ‘57 he went back to Toronto to just teach. As he studied and taught, he painted and he drew in a fashionably abstract mode.
In the summer of ’58 Bloore painted his first fully non-figurative work. “It was like bursting through the sound barrier,” he said. “Complete freedom. I knew I could paint that way - non-representationally - from that point on.” He left behind the abstractions of his youth and the expressionism he saw in New York for good. His new work featured bold composition, strong colour and striking uses of texture accomplished with paint scrapers, not with brushes, and stove-pipe enamel on panel.
That fall Bloore was brought to Regina, Saskatchewan to teach and paint and direct the MacKenzie Art Gallery and in this latter capacity he brought himself, his gallery and four local fellow painters to national recognition. In 1961 the National Gallery mounted the group show Five Painters from Regina which travelled across the country. Soon Bloore had a solo show in Toronto, juried shows across the country and was included in international shows in London, Madrid and San Paolo.
He received an Arts Council grant to spend 1962-3 in Greece. His extensive travels from there culminated in a trip to Egypt which inspired a second breakthrough. Relief. No more colour. He summarily destroyed all the work he had done on the trip and, back in Regina, destroyed most of his paintings there. It was the dawn of the “white-on-white” period. These were white oil paintings with minimal imagery and a sculpted surface with thick relief.
Bloore moved back to Toronto in 1966 to teach at York University. In the following years He was very productive, including large mural commissions and was widely collected. He became an influential commentator giving many public talks, writing in artscanada magazine and serving on many juries. He advocated a new art which was aspirational not critical, questing not questioning.
Retiring from teaching in 1986 freed Bloore for a 32 painting series of monumental works and a major retrospective which travelled across Canada. Through the nineties, he continued in the same mode but on a reduced scale, still mainly white and still with sculpted elements but with strong illusions of spacial depth as well.
2003 saw the fading away of white, the return of colours and the dark brown masonite, which had begun to show through the white, soon took over the field entirely. Bloore had found what he called “an old man’s style,” a shocking transformation and an aesthetic success which took him to the end of his days. He died in 2009.
Portraits, ages, moments...
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Sitting with some worry beads, and already favouring white for formal dress.
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Bloore once won “Best Looking Boy” on a summer sunday at Burlington Beach
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In 1949, at 24, at the University of Toronto, Bloore received his B. A. in
Art and Archeology. He then continued his studies at New York University,
Washington University and the Courtauld Institute in London, England
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In 1958, Bloore brought his own brand of non-representational painting to
Saskatchewan which he pursued independently at the Emma Lake workshops.
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In 1961 Bloore, the enthroned MacKenzie Gallery Director,
gives a solo exhibition to Bloore, the up and coming painter.
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In March '62 Canadian Art magazine surveyed the work of
21 Artists and included photos of them by Philip Pocock.
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A photo shoot by John Reeves to promote the 1965 solo show organized by
the Dorothy Cameron Gallery which also travelled to the New Brunswick Museum.
The exhibition is featured on the site here.
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Bloore, the young revolutionary, moved back to Toronto in 1966.
(Photo by Bob Howard - E.P. Taylor Research Library, AGO)
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On a trip to London in 1969.
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Giving an impromptu talk in front of an early painting, White Sun Green Rim.
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While teaching at York University 1966-86 Bloore took over the disused Stong farm house at the
north end of the grounds as a painting studio. He shared it with Doug Morton during his time there.
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Bloore would take breaks out on the veranda of Stong House. Students
were not permitted inside in order to minimize risk of stylistic influence.
“I am not interested in producing followers.”
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Teaching a 4th year painting studio course at York U.
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Another afternoon on the porch of Stong House. This image was used on the front of
the invitation to the Tribute to Ronald Bloore held at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2009.
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Bloore's much preferred choice of beverage was always Retsina, often
described by those immune to its beauty as an acquired lack of taste.
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Near Grimsby, Ontario with Eugene Knapic and other friends drawing from
nature and naturally drawing. The results are featured on the site
here.
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Bloore again, talking with his hands (when his hands can't do the talking) in front of another painting.
This time it is the grand opening of the Toronto Moore Gallery and the painting is
Sign 5 from 1961.
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Speech to the University of Regina graduating class of 2001
where he, and the other Regina four, received honourary doctorates.
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A quick snap in the Spadina studio by his assistant to be used in the
invitation to the 2002 Three Decades of Work exhibition in Toronto.
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In 2005, the year there were no playoffs, where went the StanleyCup? Well, for a
moment it passed through the photo studio on Spadina Avenue right next door to Ron.
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When the photographer Linda Corbett began a new career as a documentary filmmaker
in 2004, her first effort was “White Balance: The Work of Ronald Bloore.”
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Jane Hinton, well known for her exquisite photographs of
bridges
, is also well
known among her friends for her somewhat unusual photographs of
people
.
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In the Aegean
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