Winnipeg Loses Creative Force

Leading Visual Artist Left Huge Body of Work

A coworker mentioned to me today that Bruce Head died last week. Head was an iconic Winnipeg artist whose work I had been familiar with for years without ever knowing his name. I had the pleasure of writing a review of his retrospective show at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 2008, and familiarizing myself with one of Winnipeg's most gifted visual artists.


















"Untitled" 32 × 47½" • acrylic on panel • 2000, Ken Segal Gallery

Unfortunately, I never had the chance to meet the artist, but judging from interviews and a documentary film which ran along with the show, he seemed like an intriguing and genial man.

My 2008 review:

Bruce Head isn’t a household name, but anyone who’s walked beneath Portage and Main is familiar with his art, whether they know it or not. Head sculpted a massive 130 metre untitled concrete relief, that looks as though it were excavated by anthropologists, below the city’s most famous intersection. The abstract piece’s interlocking forms, which resemble cracked ice flows on the Assiniboine River in spring, cover the full height and length of the center of the circular tunnel in Winnipeg Square. In a way, the 77-year-old’s work sits in the very heart of Winnipeg.

Head Space: Five Decades of Bruce Head, at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, is a retrospective and exhibition of 137 paintings, sculptures, and prints by one of Manitoba’s most talented abstract artists. The show is well worth the admission price, ranging from $4 for students and seniors, to $6 for adults (free for kids under 6). Spend an hour or two exploring how the artist’s outstanding work has evolved since he graduated from the School of Art at the University of Manitoba in 1953.

Head’s most famous innovation came in 1967, when he stretched canvases over metal film reels to create his first “shaped canvases.” The protruding shapes of the canvas are smooth and sharp, angular and curved, like bones beneath a stretched hide, as though the paintings have been starved. One of my favourites, The Ross Quartet (1968), is like a lava-lamp frozen in time and spread with a butter knife across four intersecting planes. The sculptural qualities of these works allow one to move around and study them from different angles for different perspectives. The varied colours almost suggest topographical maps. I can envision myself exploring the surfaces of the paintings, measuring elevations, surveying valleys of yellow, and hiking over mountains of blue.

Head’s acrylics (from the early 90s to 2008) are densely layered with thousands of tiny strokes, small squiggles and glyphs of every hue, to compose large fields of colour. One superb painting, Bingo (1992), features small dabs of red and gold fluttering out toward the viewer, evoking a gust of wind stirring up a bowl of petals. Heads work seems to encourage creative interpretations. Brushstrokes can become arteries and veins, fields of colour become autumn leaves, storm clouds, or pools of algae. Dots could be people and lines could be streets. One painting has me imagining a waterfall of licorice allsorts, or a tide of tiny multi-coloured sea creatures.

In the 1960s, Head was considered by some critics to be one of the most promising abstract oil painters in Canada. However, I prefer his ink graphics during this period, particularly, Interior Bay (1964). Its dark lines swirl in red, pink and brown washes, and look like signatures written in some fantastic, forgotten language.

“I don’t get it,” is what I often hear about abstract art, likely because it lacks the visual references we normally see everywhere in our lives. That’s alright. What makes abstract art successful is its ability to influence our emotions, to stimulate our minds and imaginations. I suggest enjoying Head’s exemplary work on your own terms. Visit the exhibit in the mindset of an explorer to a strange and wonderful land, not a critic, and you won’t be disappointed.

Head Space, curated by Amy Karlinsky runs until Nov. 23, 2008.

If you happen to be heading through Winnipeg Square, or stopping by the Woodsworth Building on Broadway in the coming days, take a few minutes to contemplate the work of Bruce Head.

-Jay