Gary Michael Dault: A Self Interview

“…but it is extremely difficult to watch oneself working….”

                       –Xavier deMaistre, Voyage Around My Room, 1794.

Q: When did you first paint?

A: In 1952, when I was twelve. My friend, Robert Nunn and I walked to the edge of the St. Lawrence river (we lived in Kingston) and despoiled a canvas board each. His despoiling was better than mine; his painting was bolder, louder and more decisive than mine.  He was a barely pubescent Vlaminck or Derain. My painting was timid, abashed.  It was a timidity, a diffidence, I then set about to outgrow.

Q: When did you first exhibit?

A: In lots of momentary, glancing-blow places, but my first SERIOUS exhibition was in 1983, at the Jane Corkin Gallery in Toronto.  It was a big show of works on Paper. I was forty-three and in the throes of teaching and writing about art—other peoples’ art. 

Writer turned painter: Gary Michael Dault; the former art critic for The Star; shown here with his painting Burnished Day or Conch Of The Voice (mixed media; 1983) opened his one-man show at the Jane Corkin Gallery yesterday. The show runs until April 23.
Writer turned painter: Gary Michael Dault; the former art critic for The Star; shown here with his painting Burnished Day or Conch Of The Voice (mixed media; 1983) opened his one-man show at the Jane Corkin Gallery yesterday. The show runs until April 23.

Q: Let’s jump ahead about 40 years. How did your summer-long exhibition at the Periphery come about?

A: Entirely through the kindness and courtliness—the agency—of architect, artist and musician Dimitri Papatheodorou, for whom the Periphery is both a country home and a six-acre estate-wide workshop near the pastoral, pixilated village of Warkworth, Ontario.  Papatheodorou describes the Periphery as a landscape containing visual art, music, performance and architecture, seeing it as a “time-based project” where he pursues his painting (in the exquisite new studio he has recently designed and had built) and, in a spacious gallery next to it, mounts summer-long exhibitions of some artist whose work he likes (last summer’s exhibition was of paintings by Toronto-based artist Greg Angus).

Q: What makes up your Periphery exhibition?

A: It’s in two parts. The first is a small retrospective, a mounting of a dozen works on paper from 2005 to 2015. The second part, titled Passatempi, Painting in the Meantime, is a wall-sized array of about 75 recent small paintings (acrylic with collage) on rough hunks of raw cardboard, some of them (my favourites) only a few inches wide.

Q: What are they like?

A: They’re muscular and messy, wildly gestural, impatient, ecstatic, frenetic and as far as I’m concerned, almost unbearably beautiful. They make my chest tight.

Q: They are, as you say, awfully small.  Why?

A: Because they are painted on very small pieces of throwaway cardboard—distaff, disreputable, ignoble shardsof cardboard, a lot of which come to me as the wrappings around books I’ve ordered or the boxes some foodstuffs like pasta come in.  I save them all for painting.  I love cardboard.  I like its used look. It has a history.

Q: When do you paint?

A: Between writing poems.  Which is to say, all the time.

Q: How long do you spend on a painting?

A: About 2-3 minutes.  5 minutes tops.

Q: What’s the rush?

A: I’m getting old.  I’m eighty-five now.

Q: That’s the reason?

A: Nah.  In fact, I’ve always worked that way.  Back in 2010, when I was exhibiting my 1 Minute Cereal Box Landscapes everywhere, each one of them took me only a minute apiece.  I’d make a whole exhibition in an hour.  Labouring over a painting is okay, I guess, if you’re Magritte or somebody.

Q: What do you like about these rapid-fire cardboards?

A: Their hecticity, the rush of them, the meaning (sometimes august, symbolic and even mythic) that always—always—emerges from them.  Not one of them is ever non-representational.  And yet not one of them knows where it’s going when it starts out.

Q: What if you make a mistake?

A: I can’t.  If a painting begins not to work—to bore me, for example—I subject it to some cleansing, cataclysmic event, like a sluicing of white paint—and then I start in to fix it.  I haven’t lost one yet.   

Q:  How did you decide on their installation?

A: Dimitri did that. He’s an architect. He has a perfect sense of form.

Gary Michael Dault

July 16, 2025

Peter Templeman: Into the Void

by Steve Rockwell

Peter Templeman, Petroglyphs, 2024, acrylic on panel, 16 x 20 inches (40.5 x 51 cm)
Peter Templeman, Petroglyphs, 2024, acrylic on panel, 16 x 20 inches (40.5 x 51 cm)

In his exhibition at the Christopher Cutts Gallery, Peter Templeman, having gone “Into the Void” returns here with the painted evidence of his journey. “Big Phase No. 5” (1997), an oil on canvas measures 72 x 84 inches, and the appropriately named acrylic on canvas “Wheel” (2022), at a mere eight inches square, serve as bookends to Templeman’s odyssey. The 2024 acrylic on panel, “Petroglyphs” have the qualities of an Egyptian cartouche, its “hieroglyphs” enclosed within their customary oval. Cryptic, yet conversely transparent, the panel amounts to an artist signature or seal, somehow punctuating his work as official – as if carved in stone.

Peter Templeman, Phase No. 2, 1997, oil on canvas, 72 x 60 inches (183 x 152.5 cm)
Peter Templeman, Phase No. 2, 1997, oil on canvas, 72 x 60 inches (183 x 152.5 cm)

Centrepieces of the “Into the Void” works are four major paintings that Christoper Cutts acquired subsequent to a late 1990s visit to the artist studio. After decades in storage, these were combined and displayed here with contemporary works from Templeman’s studio. A visit by the artist by the artist to the Cutts Gallery this past winter tweaked a reminder of the stored works, thereby kicking its exhibition wheel into full gear. The “Phase Series (No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, and Big Phase No. 5)” are significant paintings in Templeman’s oeuvre. Besides their relative scale to the rest of the exhibition, they exemplify a successful synthesis of control and abandonment. Templeman’s painterly forays into his “void” divide variously into the more or less ordered. His “Paintings 1 – 9” as a group, paints the abyss as roiled chaos. His 2014 “Rocking on the High Seas” has the artist steering directly into the eye of the storm.

Peter Templeman, Rocking on the High Seas, 2014, oil on canvas, 24 x 18 inches (61 x 45.5 cm)
Peter Templeman, Rocking on the High Seas, 2014, oil on canvas, 24 x 18 inches (61 x 45.5 cm)

An unflinching resolve to go to the wall with each painterly outing is typical fare with Templeman. Relatively early in the artist’s career, the French Symbolist literature of Gide, Rimbaud and Beaudelaire, had primed the young artist to a receptivity of the unconscious realm. The “wall,” seemingly without exception here, is the dark unknown, against which every scumbled brush stroke gleams. In geologic terms, “Big Phase No. 5” may be seen as a motherlode, the artist’s repository of countless layers of paint. Their formation amounts to the congeal of phantasms into ever-shifting tectonic plates of pigment. Through a kind of alchemy, the deposit of everyday sight and sound minutiae is made precious in the act of having been made visible.

Peter Templeman, Big Phase No. 5, 1997, oil on canvas, 72 x 84 inches (183 x 213.5 cm)
Peter Templeman, Big Phase No. 5, 1997, oil on canvas, 72 x 84 inches (183 x 213.5 cm)

Templeman’s 2014 oil on panel ,”The Void,” features a window or portal. The viewer, once entered, is drawn into a vortex where tumult is the price of admission. The effect is one of tunnelling, amplifying a sense of dimension within dimensions. Here the artist is possibly throwing us the key to his creative “tripping,” with some of the GPS signposts along the way. Its loosely brushed “O” shape around the window hub might suggest the Greek last letter omega. Regardless, a sense of the cosmic is inferred with the artist stretching his craft to an existential limit. The 2015 canvasses such as “Top Knot” and “Physual” read as an interlacing of enigmatic glyphs. As syllabic utterances that coalesce, they exemplify the body of works where Templeman has tamed his tempests.

Peter Templeman, The Void, 2014, oil on panel, 42 x 36 inches (106.5 x 91.5 cm)
Peter Templeman, The Void, 2014, oil on panel, 42 x 36 inches (106.5 x 91.5 cm) 

With a 50-year-long career and many artists of note that Templeman has rubbed shoulders with, a consistency of development and vision predominates. While Graham Coughtry had impacted the artist as a student, Toronto’s Three Schools of Art introduced him to the art of John MacGregor, who’s improvisational surrealist method provided a significant building block. Templeman’s now distinct brushed iconography is part of a connective abstract tradition that threads generations.

Hiroyuki Hamada: New Sculpture

by Christopher Hart Chambers

This exhibition of Hiroyuki Hamada’s new sculptures comprises 11 works, both sculptures free standing and wall hanging. I hesitate to term all of the latter, “bas reliefs,” while several of the major works certainly are. And those are very similar in formulation to the free standing sculptures, although they are sans the hallmark pedestals, which stand to be part and parcel with the abstract forms they support.

Hiroyuki Hamada, #88, 2016 - 20, Painted Resin, 29 x 47 x 41"
Hiroyuki Hamada, #88, 2016 – 20, Painted Resin, 29 x 47 x 41″

The smaller wall hung pieces are more akin to bricolage painting; as folded, bent, and twisted scraps of what looks like metal or leather are affixed to flat, subtly toned, apparently wooden substrates. The larger works impart a distinctly Japanese aesthetic in their elegant, zen-like, and graceful simplicity of pure form; as such without any backing besides the wall -or they are free standing. What appear to be natural materials such as white or black ceramic tile, rusted iron, or stone are also displayed on bases of what look to be thoroughly rusted pipes. To be clear on this point: the artist considers these works painted sculptures. They are all constructed of synthetic materials. Hamada’s masterful use of trompe l’oeil surfacing is astounding. The rusty piping is in fact p v c and the aquiline shapes they support are carved insulation foam coated with painted plastreric resin. Polystyrenes have been popular with artists since at least the 1950s and 60s when Jean Dubuffet and Nikki de Saint Phalle first explored the then new found resource. The properties of these mediums allow for direct impulsive carving and so generally disregard the conventional sculptural necessity of pre constructing an armature or so to speak, skeleton within, thereby allowing the artist an unrestrained free hand in expression.

Hiroyuki Hamada, #100, 2023, Painted Resin, 38 x 63 x 26.5". Base: 35 x 46 x 26.5"
Hiroyuki Hamada, #100, 2023, Painted Resin, 38 x 63 x 26.5″, Base: 35 x 46 x 26.5″

Notably, Dubuffet topped off his monumental works with stucco while de Saint Phalle frequently embellished her works with mosaics. More recently others have crusted the artifice with epoxies, fiberglass, urethane putties, or other substances; then painted them in order to stave off degradation resulting from exposure to sunlight. These are industrial materials often used in construction, or automotive assembly, ship building; even for making surf boards. Significantly, pragmatic considerations have enabled artists to explore and discover various possibilities. These newfound materials were lightweight, comparatively inexpensive, and easily manipulated without the need of a foundry. If Hiroyuki Hamada’s works were composed of what they convincingly appear to be they would weigh more than could be lifted in this gallery’s elevator, or hung on its sheetrock walls. Yet there are laborious old school techniques which could enable his vision with a forge and kiln. Frankly, Hamada’s mastery of faux finishes over the coated, smoothed, and refined forms is so complete that I didn’t notice until he mentioned it. The illusionistic pragmatism is not what grabbed me. I was attracted to the work purely for its aesthetics – its elegance: the simple smooth forms which reference predecessors Isamu Noguchi and Jean Arp’s exigencies, amongst many functional designers, who modeled their modernist forms in traditional materials – whilst Hamada’s tasteful combinations of industrial supplies are not what they seem to be at all, presenting a fascinatingly duplicitous conundrum.

Hiroyuki Hamada, #108, 2025, Painted and pigmented Resin, 36.5 x 55 x 13"
Hiroyuki Hamada, #108, 2025, Painted and pigmented Resin, 36.5 x 55 x 13″

Hiroyuki Hamada: New Sculpture, May 6 – June 13, 2025. Bookstein Projects, 39 East 78th Street, NYC

An Afternoon with Collectors Ed Nemeth and Nancy Parke-Taylor

by Roy Bernardi and Jennifer Leskiw

We had the good fortune of meeting Ed Nemeth and Nancy Parke-Taylor at a recent art opening for Steve Rockwell, the publisher of d’Art International magazine. Ed is a semi-retired pharmacologist and Nancy has currently retired from her career as a lawyer. After much chatting with Ed and Nancy, we discovered that these two lovely people had a fabulous collection of contemporary Canadian and American art. Lucky for us, we were invited to their home to see this wonderful and eclectic collection.

I must say, the house itself is a work of art, located on a beautiful street lined with large mature trees. Although the façade of the house is somewhat modern, its large open spaces are filled with paintings, photographs, sculpture, works on paper, and art books covering almost every subject one can imagine. 

Ed Nemeth and Nancy Parke-Taylor with Tony Calzetta work
Ed Nemeth and Nancy Parke-Taylor with Tony Calzetta work

Upon entering the living room, your eye takes you to a beautiful painting by Toronto artist Tony Calzetta. It’s big and bold. Over the fireplace hangs an abstract by Toronto based artist Seo Eun Kim, who often goes by the name Sunny Kim. When viewed from afar, the surface of the painting resembles a needle point embroidery, when in fact, most of the surface is created by use of a baker’s piping bag.

Alcove with Barker Fairly paintings
Alcove with Barker Fairly paintings

The opposite side of the room has three lovely landscapes by Barker Fairley. The trio is serene and peaceful. To the left hangs a wonderful Harold Town single autographic print and below a landscape by Charles Comfort. And below to the left of that, a lovely Ray Mead ink abstract. Directly below the Fairleys sits a very large and quirky ceramic sculpture by David James Gilhooly. It’s fantastic and the juxtaposition of these works is so much fun. Also scattered among the table tops are intriguing metal sculptures by Santa Fe sculptor Kevin Box. Some of the pieces bring to mind origami works due to their extreme thinness and fine detail.

Ed Nemeth and a wall of abstract works
Ed Nemeth and a wall of abstract works

Similar to numerous collectors, Ed and Nancy’s collection comprises various pieces by the same artist, reflecting different stages of the artist’s life. Their collection features multiple works by Barker Fairley, ranging from landscapes (as depicted) to several portraits. The same goes for several pieces by Tony Calzetta from various phases of his artistic journey. A significant portion of their collection showcases multiple works by the same artist, with some displayed together while others are dispersed throughout the house, each hanging alone or in clusters in different rooms.

Robert Longo work
Robert Longo work

From here we stroll into the dining room where on one wall hangs two large scale black and white lithographs by American artist Robert Longo. The male and female are captured in a dance-like motion creating an amazing dynamism between the two. 

The opposite walls are covered in a variety of black and white photographs of various individuals including two photographs by renowned photographer Sally Mann. Among this collection is one of a young girl who once adorned the cover of an issue of American Fiction magazine. There is one striking photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister of the German Third Reich. There’s a fascinating story behind this photo. After Eisenstaedt took the photograph, there was a knock on his door one evening.  Fear engulfed him as he thought he would be arrested and taken away by the Gestapo but, to his surprise and complete relief, he was simply asked for a copy of the photograph for Dr. Goebbels’ personal collection. 

As we leave the dining room, we walk through what I would consider a reading room filled with hundreds of art books and a fabulous Janet Cardiff abstract work of art. Such a unique piece as Cardiff is primarily known for her sound performance works and videos. Cardiff, along with George Bures Miller represented Canada at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001. Truly an amazing find. 

In this room hangs a number of photographs by Mark Hogancamp who works with toy figures, placing them in certain spaces and in certain positions in order to create a fictional city. Mark Hogancamp produced a book of his photographs titled “Welcome to Marwencol” which later became part of the idea behind the movie with Steve Carell, an American actor and comedian, called “Welcome to Marwen” released in 2018.

Belgian artist Jean Pierre Schoss blue metal sculpture
Belgian artist Jean Pierre Schoss blue metal sculpture

This room leads into the next which looks out into a well cared for garden. You’ll see a massive blue metal sculpture against the fence by Belgian artist Jean Pierre Schoss of Dog Bite Steel. His quirkiness and comedic appeal makes him look like a big, old friendly monster: he’s simply fabulous. Schoss uses recycled materials such as steel and creates fascinating creatures and animals. He feels the discarded material has a lot of character and always tells a life story. There are many smaller pieces scattered throughout this and other rooms. They’re very sweet and quite charming. But the outdoor monster is the best! 

What is intriguing about their collection is that the arrangement of the works is perfectly curated. They appear to be positioned in a way that they all complement one another, reflecting similar themes, artistic styles, and colours harmonizing seamlessly. 

What a treat it is to walk throughout the house and see works by Rita Letendre, Harold Town, Ray Mead, Barker Fairley, Robert Longo, Robert Chandler, Ian McKay, Katherine Bemrose, Steve Rockwell, Christopher Winter, Robert Marchessault, John Massey, Tim Deverell and Sally Mann, just to name a few.

Steve Rockwell at Sheff Contemporary

by Hugh Alcock

A new gallery has opened in Toronto – Sheff Contemporary – located in a surprisingly airy basement on Danforth Ave. Given the number of commercial galleries that have closed in recent years, its opening is in itself something to celebrate. Its inaugural show highlights the work of Steve Rockwell. The gallery’s owner, Saeed Mohamed has known Rockwell many years, and has always been greatly impressed by his work.

The space, Mohamed explains, is important in the sense that he understands how art is ineluctably an in-person experience. Indeed, it the experiencing of art in the gallery setting that is a central idea of Rockwell’s work. At the same time, Mohamed is not committed to keeping the gallery in one location. Rather, he appreciates that it is the people – artists, audience, buyers etc. – who together are the essential elements of this experience. Art, he feels, is often elitist and he is keen, instead, to promote art in a way that makes it more relatable to the public, who like himself, may not be connoisseurs in the traditional sense. His hope is to foster an inclusive crowd of art enthusiasts who will facilitate this aim. He sees his role as providing the space and the opportunity to experience art. Certainly judging from the crowd who showed up for the opening reception, he’s off to a good start.

Installation view of Steve Rockwell Meditation on Space at Sheff Contemporary, 2025. Photo: Hugh Alcock
Installation view of Steve Rockwell Meditation on Space at Sheff Contemporary, 2025. Photo: Hugh Alcock

Rockwell’s show is about art. It is, one might say, second order art. Moreover it is a breed of conceptual art, based on performance of a peculiarly inconspicuous kind. Rockwell’s work invariably has some story behind it. For instance, in one of his black and white paintings, one confronts an image of the artist himself, arms fully spread, with bright light radiating from his torso, titled My Spirit Lives Here! (1996). Nearby is another image of him, titled Blackout, which in contrast to his effulgent self, has him shrouded in darkness – his features barely discernible.

My Spirit Lives Here! 1996, acrylic on masonite, 32 x 32 inches (Inspired by the January 2, 1996 visit to the Ernie Wolfe Gallery in Santa Monica, California). Courtesy of the artist
My Spirit Lives Here! 1996, acrylic on masonite, 32 x 32 inches (Inspired by the January 2, 1996 visit to the Ernie Wolfe Gallery in Santa Monica, California). Courtesy of the artist

These two paintings are part of a series of five, on the theme of meditating on various spaces in galleries, that is ostensibly based on a story akin to that in the Bible of the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus. A journey from the infidel’s blindness to the light of faith. But any such story line surmised by the viewer, it turns out, is post hoc. The order of the paintings was chosen long afterwards. Each is a record of some event he experienced while executing a performance he titled Meditations on Space. It involved him showing up in some reputable gallery in Switzerland, France, Toronto, Los Angeles or New York, announcing to its custodians that he was there to meditate on the gallery space. Most acquiesced and let him be. But part of the performance concerned his interactions with people and with the space itself. While in the Ernie Wolfe Gallery, Los Angeles, for instance, its owner shouted out to Rockwell ‘This is where I live. My spirit lives here!’, hence the title of the painting mentioned above.

Meditations on Space, 1996, acrylic on masonite, 32 x 32 inches (Inspired by the September 20, 1995 visit to Galerie Jamile Weber in Zurich, Switzerland). Courtesy of the artist
Meditations on Space, 1996, acrylic on masonite, 32 x 32 inches (Inspired by the September 20, 1995 visit to Galerie Jamile Weber in Zurich, Switzerland). Courtesy of the artist

While these works are not literally biblical in derivation, they do touch on big questions – on life and death specifically. In Blackout we see a grainy barely discernible image of Rockwell’s face. It inspired by an episode while visiting and meditating on a gallery space when he was suddenly plunged into darkness, due to a power outage of course. In his depiction of this event Rockwell chose to render himself, despite the almost total darkness, as a comment on our perception of darkness. As Rockwell points out, normally – at night, closing our eyes etc., – we do not in fact experience total black. Instead we ‘see’ what are sometimes called phosphenes, namely internally generated patterns. The image of his face that we see imitates this experience. Only death leads to true blackness in this sense. Likewise, light is obviously associated with life. Hence Rockwell’s choice of painting in black and white – emblematic of pure light and darkness, i.e., life and death.

Blackout, 1996, acrylic on masonite, 32 x 32 inches (Inspired by the October 3, 1995 visit to Galerie Lahumiere in Paris, France). Courtesy of the artist
Blackout, 1996, acrylic on masonite, 32 x 32 inches (Inspired by the October 3, 1995 visit to Galerie Lahumiere in Paris, France). Courtesy of the artist

Rockwell’s performances on the theme of galleries goes back to about a decade earlier. In 1988 he decided to drop by at 64 of Toronto’s galleries, and ask their owners or administrators to fill out a form indicating in which direction their main entrance faces – north, east, south or west. Using the information he received he built a model, displayed on the wall, representing each gallery as a compartment on a square grid. A small aperture on the respective wall of each indicates the direction of the entrance. Here one is reminded of Sol Le Witt’s work, e.g., his permutations of the edges of a cube. The appearance of the material art object is entirely determined by the rules underwriting its construction. Indeed, Le Witt has been a major influence on Rockwell. This year Rockwell repeated the performance. In the updated version he struggled, sadly, to find 64 galleries in the city.

Gallery Space, 1988 (left) and Gallery Space 2025 (right) both house paint on mahogony panel and card, laser transfer text, 14 x 14 x 2 inches. Photo: Hugh Alcock
Gallery Space, 1988 (left) and Gallery Space 2025 (right) both house paint on mahogony panel and card, laser transfer text, 14 x 14 x 2 inches. Photo: Hugh Alcock

Rockwell’s original motive for this earlier gallery performance was to find a way to introduce himself to the various galleries, and learn how they operate. This kernel of an idea became an abiding theme for him. As well, it is illustrative of Rockwell’s entrepreneurship, his willingness to go out and introduce himself and his ideas, more importantly, to people. As testament to the footwork this performance demanded, he has chosen to encase, and thus preserve, the very pair of shoes he wore walking around the city.

Gallery Space (Shoes), 1988, acrylic, wood floor, shoes, 14 x 14 x 15 inches. Courtesy of the artist
Gallery Space (Shoes), 1988, acrylic, wood floor, shoes, 14 x 14 x 15 inches. Courtesy of the artist

Here we see Rockwell’s wit – humour and sharp intelligence – shining through. Although physically the work occupies a modest amount of space, it brims over with ideas and reflections on the nature of art itself. Clearly Rockwell loves art, both the making of it and as its cultural wealth. Not to be missed as well is an array of collages he has meticulously produced – small works on paper – that investigate the margins of pictures and images. Beautiful work altogether.

Installation view with collages, each 2025, dArt pages with oil, 7 x 8.5 inches. Photo: Hugh Alcock
Installation view with collages, each 2025, dArt pages with oil, 7 x 8.5 inches. Photo: Hugh Alcock

*Exhibition information: Steve Rockwell, Meditations on Space, June 5 – 30, 2025, Sheff Contemporary, 1276 Danforth Ave, Toronto. By appointment only (416-792-7792).