Showing 110 results

Authority record
Booth, Gotthard, 1899-1975
AC00345 · Person · 1899 - 1975

Gotthard Booth (1899-1975) was a medical doctor specializing in the practice of psychiatry concerned with chronic physical diseases, psychosomatic medicine, and studies in the relationship between religion and health. Born in Nuremberg, Germany, Booth graduated from the University of Munich Medical School in 1923, and in the early 1930s moved to the United States. He resided in Westport, Connecticut but maintained a practice in New York City. Booth taught at Columbia University from 1945 to 1953, was instructor for one year at the New York Medical College, and from 1962 was consulting psychiatrist for the Union Theological Seminary, New York. In 1965 he became a visiting lecturer at Waterloo Lutheran University (now Wilfrid Laurier University) and its federated college, Waterloo Lutheran Seminary. A fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Booth's research resulted in the publication of more than 60 articles. He worked as a research associate with the New York Psychiatric Institute for ten years. He was also a member of the American Psychosomatic Society, the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine, the New York County Medical Society, and the American Medical Association.

Boyle, John B., 1941-
AGOAC00689 · Person · 1941 -

John Bernard Boyle (1941- ) is an artist, activist, curator and writer who has lived and worked in St. Catharines, London, Elsinore, and Peterborough, Ontario. He married Janet Perlman, with whom he has one daughter, Emily. Boyle was educated at London Teachers’ College and the University of Western Ontario, and is self-taught as a painter. He taught elementary school in St. Catharines intermittently between 1962 and 1968. In 1974 he moved with his family to a converted church in Elsinore, Ontario (near Owen Sound), where he had his studio until 2002. He is currently based in Peterborough. Boyle began to exhibit his paintings in 1964, the same year he was inspired by meeting London artists including Jack Chambers and Greg Curnoe. In 1966 controversy arose at the London Public Library and Art Museum over Boyle’s exhibited piece Seated Nude. Boyle was an early participant in London’s 20/20 Gallery. In 1972 he designed sets for the play Buffalo Jump at Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto; that same year he curated the first Billboard Show in St. Catharines. In 1980 Boyle completed the mural Our Knell for Queen Subway Station, Toronto. From 1973 through the 1990s, Boyle exhibited regularly at Nancy Poole’s Studio, Toronto. A key figure among the artist activists who established professional representation and rights for artists in the early 1970s, Boyle was the founding spokesperson of Canadian Artists Representation Ontario (CARO) in 1971. In 1970 he served as the first president of the Niagara Artists Co-operative (later Company). Boyle was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Art Gallery of Ontario, 1975-1977. Boyle has written extensively in journals including 20 Cents Magazine, Parachute, and Twelve Mile Creek. His regular column “According to Boyle” in CAROT (1975-78) dealt with challenges facing artists. Boyle has written three novels, No Angel Came (1995); and the unpublished The Gergovnians and The Peregrinations and Permutations of a Young Artist in Canada. His illustration and book design work includes The Port Dalhousie Stories by Dennis Tourbin (1987), as well as several magazine articles and book jackets. He initiated the discipline of “Canadology” in 1989 to record the social customs of the country. Boyle is a founding member (since 1965) and principal kazooist of The Nihilist Spasm Band. His work is represented in numerous Canadian collections, including the National Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Briere, Elaine
AC004 · Person

Elaine Briere is a Vancouver documentary-maker, photographer, journalist and social justice activist. Her documentary, Bitter Paradise: The Sell-Out of East Timor, won the best political documentary award at the Hot Docs Festival, North America’s preeminent documentary film showcase, in 1997. In addition to her work on East Timor, which includes a published collection of photographs (Testimony: Photographs of East Timor, Between the Lines, 2004), Briere has directed a documentary on Canadian merchant seamen, Betrayed: The Story of Canadian Merchant Seamen (1997), and has produced photo-journalism and print articles for "The Tyee", "Briarpatch", "Our Times", and other publications dedicated to labour and social justice issues. Briere’s photographs have appeared in many publications including, Carte Blanche Photography 1 (2004); The Other Mexico: The North American Triangle Completed (1996), South East Asia Tribal Groups and Ethnic Minorities (1987) and The Family of Women (1979). Her photographs have been featured in exhibits in Canada, Japan, Sweden and the United States.

Brownstone, S. (Shieky)
SB · Person · fl. 1977

Dr. Yehoshua (Shieky) Brownstone is a photographer in London, Ontario. He was formerly a Professor in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Western Ontario.

Bush, Jack
AGOAC00760 · Person · 1909-1977

John Hamilton Bush (1909–1977), primarily known as Jack Bush, was a Canadian painter best known for his Abstract Expressionist style. Born in Toronto, he lived in London, Ont. and Montreal during his early years. Jack Bush began his career in advertising, working in his father’s firm, Rapid Electro Type Company in Montreal. During this time, he studied at the Art Association of Montreal with Edmund Dyonnet and Adam Sherriff Scott. In 1928, he transferred to the company’s office in Toronto, where he took evening classes under Frederick Challener, John Alfsen and Charles Comfort at the Ontario College of Art. Bush’s early work as a painter was influenced by Comfort and the Group of Seven, and throughout the 1930s and ‘40s he produced largely landscape and figurative paintings. His first exhibition was with the Ontario Society of Artists in Toronto in 1936.
In 1934, Jack Bush married Mabel Mills Teakle, a family friend from Montreal, and together they had three sons, Jack Jr (b. 1936), Robert (b. 1938) and Terry (b. 1942). In 1953, dissatisfied with Canada’s place in the international contemporary art scene, Bush and several other Toronto abstract artists founded the group Painters Eleven. William Ronald, another member of Painters Eleven, and an artist who had worked in New York, introduced U.S. art critic Clement Greenberg to the group, which led to a lasting friendship between Bush and Greenberg. The contact with Greenberg in 1957 led to Bush’s international breakthrough in the early 1960s, beginning with his 1962 exhibition at the Robert Elkon Gallery in New York. Between the late 1950s and mid ‘60s, Bush painted in loose brushstrokes with diluted oils, staining paint onto unprimed canvas. In 1966, concerned by the health hazards associated with oil-based paints, he switched to water-based acrylics, less textured than oils but more brightly coloured.
In 1964, Jack Bush’s work was included in Greenberg’s Post-Painterly Abstraction at the Los Angeles County Museum, an exhibition that travelled to Minneapolis and Toronto. Along with Jacques Hurtubise, Bush represented Canada at the Bienal de São Paulo (Brazil) in 1967. In the year preceding his death in 1977 (from a heart attack), he received the Order of Canada. That same year, the Art Gallery of Ontario mounted a retrospective exhibition of his abstract works that travelled to several Canadian galleries. Jack Bush’s work is in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, London’s Tate Gallery and others.

AGOAC00487 · Person · 1869 - 1959

Frederick Sproston Challener, painter, was born in Whetstone, England in 1869 and came to Canada in 1870. He studied at the Ontario School of Art, was first exhibited in 1900 at the Royal Canadian Academy and subsequently worked as a newspaper artist. After a tour of Europe and the Middle East in 1898-99, he began working as a muralist and participated in the decoration of the recently completed Toronto City Hall. At the end of the First World War, Challener worked as a painter for the Canadian War Records Department. He made his career chiefly by creating murals for passenger boats, restaurants, hotels—such as Fort Rouillé in the King Edward Hotel,Toronto—office buildings and theatres, including the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto. He also produced easel paintings, watercolours and drawings in a realistic, romantic style. From 1927-1952 he taught at the Ontario College of Art, during which period he made notes and assembled material on Canadian artists. He died in Toronto in 1959. Challener was a member of numerous arts organizations including the Toronto Art Students’ League, Ontario Society of Artists, Royal Canadian Academy, Society of Mural Decorators of Toronto and the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto (founding member, 1908). His work is in the National Gallery of Canada, the Civic Art Gallery, Winnipeg, the Art Gallery of Ontario and numerous public buildings.

Chambers, Jack, 1931-1978
AGOAC00336 · Person · 1931 - 1978

Jack (John Richard) Chambers, artist and experimental filmmaker, was born in London, Ontario in 1931. He studied at the Escuela Central de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid from 1957 to 1959. In Spain he met Olga Sanchez Bustos, whom he married in Canada in 1963. They made their home in London and had two children, John (b. 1964) and Diego (b.1965). Chambers’ style of painting and drawing in the 1960s was characterized by a dreamlike quality. Toward the end of that decade, his work became intensely focused on the depiction of reality, often relating closely to source photographs, most of which were taken by the artist himself. Between 1964 and 1970 Chambers also directed eight films. The subjects of his work were often domestic or regional, focusing on his experience in London. In 1967, Chambers founded Canadian Artists’ Representation to try to establish fee scales for reproduction rights and rental fees for works in public exhibitions, and served as president from 1967 to 1975. In 1969 Chambers published his essay “Perceptual Realism”, and that same year, was diagnosed with leukemia. From 1971 to 1977 he worked on “Red and Green,” a study of art and perception (unpublished). Chambers died in London in 1978. His work is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and numerous other Canadian galleries.

016-.1 · Person · 1924 - 2000

Eeva Annikki Kantokoski was born May 8, 1924 in Alajärvi, Finland to Matias (Matti) Niilo Kantokoski (born 1901), and his wife Anna Milia (born 1903). The family name was shortened from Kantokoski to Koski, but it is unclear when exactly this occurred. Eeva Annikki and her parents immigrated to Canada in 1924. They arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia on August 2, 1924, and then settled in Sudbury, Ontario. In December 1925, Eeva Annikki’s brother, Veikko Vesa Matias Kantokoski (Koski) was born. Sometime after their arrival in Canada Eeva Annikki's name was changed to Ann Eva, though others often referred to her as Anne, Anni or Annie. The family's early years were spent in Sudbury, Ontario. After the death of their mother in 1933, Ann and her brother Veikko lived with their father in Sudbury during the summer months and their aunt Ida Marie (Koivula) Lehti in Oshawa during the winter. Ann completed her education in Sudbury, Ontario in 1939, and gained a High School Entrance Certificate, though she did not attend due to the cost. Once she completed her schooling in 1939 she found employment in domestic service for Mrs. J. Ferrier, in Sudbury. Between 1940 and 1941 she worked at Korpela's Grocery Store on Bancroft Drive, and Maki's Restaurant on Elgin Street in Sudbury, Ontario. In 1942, Ann moved to Malartic, Quebec to work in a bunkhouse and kitchen in a mining town. There she met Archie Chisholm, whom she married in Montreal on May 24, 1942. Their first child, Carl Richard, was born on December 24, 1943. When her husband was posted overseas during World War II, Ann returned to Sudbury to stay with relatives, and completed a Red Cross Volunteer Nursing Service course during that time. After the Second World War, Ann and Archie had two more children; Leslie Karen, born March 8, 1947, and Barry Neil, born October 8, 1955. While living in North-western Quebec, Ann contributed her time to the Protestant Elementary School Board and the Canadian Air Force Ground Observer Corps. In 1974, she separated from her husband and moved to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. There she completed high school and went on to study nursing. She became a Certified Nursing Assistant, and obtained a post-graduate diploma in psychiatric nursing. Between 1976 and 1986 she worked at the Nova Scotia Hospital. Ann Eva Chisholm died on March 12, 2000 at the age of 74, and is buried in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Conn, Gordon, d. 1977
AGOAC00123 · Person · 1888-1977

Gordon Conn (ca.1888-1977) was an art collector and supporter of visual art in Toronto. He studied to be a musician and worked as a painter in his youth. Although he did not pursue a career as an artist, he maintained connections with many artists. He was a friend of the painter Kenneth Forbes (1892-1980) who painted Conn’s portrait in 1935. Together with Forbes, Gordon Conn founded the Ontario Institute of Painters devoted to the display of painting based on what Forbes called “traditional” art values. Conn turned over his studio in Wychwood Park in Toronto—The Little Gallery—to a series of one-man shows of its members. Near the end of his life, he donated paintings by artists represented in this collection to public art galleries in Ontario.