Category: features

by Roy Bernardi and Jennifer Leskiw

Recently, we went to see the exhibition of Rae Johnson’s work at the Christopher Cutts Gallery on Morrow Avenue in downtown Toronto. Several large-scale landscape paintings were shown among smaller more intimate landscapes. Johnson, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, studied at the New School of Art in Toronto from 1975 to 1976 and continued her education at the Ontario College of Art from 1977 to 1980. As a distinguished female Canadian artist, she lived and created art in Toronto during the 1980s before relocating to Flesherton, Ontario, in 1987. She stated that Robert Markle, one of her educators, was her most significant influence. She passed away in 2020. The opening event was attended by Rae Johnson’s children, Adrian, Joslyn and June.

Her artistic expression captures the diverse experiences of life in her immediate surroundings. Her artwork ranges from representations of demons and ethereal beings in the snow, to angelic figures, scenes of indulgence, intimate moments in bathtubs, depictions of societal outcasts, inebriated individuals, saintly figures, and verdant landscapes reminiscent of the Garden of Eden. Her creations explore the intersection of the sacred and the profane. She often portrayed her studio or living space, utilizing friends and her children as subjects.

We sat down with her daughter Joslyn Rogers who works in the entertainment industry as an Actor/Writer/Director for a candid interview.

What was life like as the child of an artist?

I was raised in a creative environment.  I had the privilege of being the child of two talented individuals.  My mother Rae Johnson was a gifted visual artist. My father, Clarke Rogers, was the artistic director from 1982-1987 of Theatre Passe Muraille, a Canadian alternative theatre company that champions independent and experimental performances.  

I remember playing in my mother’s various studios. She would be painting into the night, listening to Nirvana or Jimi Hendrix, and I would be finger painting beside her. I remember falling asleep to the clickety-clack of my father’s typewriter, and playing backstage at his rehearsals. When I was a baby we were in-between apartments so we slept on the set of ‘Jessica’, a play by Linda Griffiths and Maria Campbell. My father was directing the play and my mother painted the poster for it. 

We moved out of Toronto in the late 1980s and bought a country property in Flesherton, Ontario. We had acres of forest around us and a pond which became the muse for mother’s paintings over the next decade. Flesherton was an artist community so most of my friends were children of artists, like the daughters of painter Harold Klunder and sculptor performance artist Catherine Carmichael. Regardless of where we lived, our living rooms always transformed into my mother’s creative workspace. We frequently attended art shows alongside her eclectic circle of friends, including her close companions and fellow artists Tom Dean, Sybil Goldstein and Lorne Wagman. 

My sister, brother, and I were often left to our own devices, and would play from morning until night out in the sprawling woods surrounding our house. We became very attuned to nature, to the spirits of the forest, and were given the freedom to explore the imaginary worlds we would create in play.

After the death of my father, my family moved back to Toronto. It’s only now as an adult that I can truly appreciate the clan I grew up with and belong to, and that when I declared to my mother as a little girl that I wanted to be an actress, I was met with encouragement and not “get a real job”.

My mother, Rae, was an integral part of the Toronto arts community during the late 1970s and early 1980s. During this time, a collective emerged, ChromaZone, a vibrant creative group dedicated to reintroducing figurative painting to Toronto, featuring notable figures such as Brian Burnett, Oliver Girling, Andy Fabo, Sybil Goldstein and Tony Wilson. My mother was also an associate professor at OCADU. It’s stunning how influential she was.  

Tell us what you know about your mother’s relationship with Brian Burnett? 

Brian and my mother met at The New School of Art in Toronto as students. They quickly fell in love and had my brother Adrian. My mother told me about being poor students with a babe in arms, living in artist warehouses, and the “art wars” between them – spending nights trying to out-paint one another. Tom Dean remembers visiting Rae and Brian at their illegal apartment on Niagara street, which they had converted mostly into their studio with floor to ceiling paintings and a giant mound of dirty baby diapers in the centre of it all. Brian and Rae were budding artists together. They played in experimental art bands, one called Niagara, and another called DogSound, with other local Queen West visual artists like Micheal Merrill, Alan Glicksman, Lorne Wagman, and Derek Caines. They were ambitious, hot young art stars, and found their artistic voices together. They had the best art dealers in town: Brian was with Av Issacs, and Rae with Carmen Lamanna. I can see how they influenced each other in their respective paintings which share surrealist, dream-like qualities. Sometimes I can even see representations of each other in their work.

They broke up in the mid 80s after nearly a decade together. It was devastating to my mother, who nearly had a mental breakdown but, that led to some of her most powerful paintings which now belong to permanent collections throughout Canada.

What do you recall about Rae’s art work?

When I think of my mother’s work, I recall my own life. When we were living in Florence, she was working on a series titled “Bambino Miracolo”, which was exhibited at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Rome, Italy. They were large scale oil paintings inspired by the horrific images coming out of the Bosnian war at the time. Embedded in the painted scenes were dying babies attached to intrusive medical devices and renaissance angels guarding over top. 

My life has been chronicled through my mother’s paintings. She painted our property in Flesherton, every season, every time of day. She painted portraits of her friends, every studio she inhabited, the storms and sunsets over Lake Winnipeg where our family cottage was, and she painted us, her children. I appear in her paintings at every stage of my life: as a baby, a young girl, and even as an adult. One of the most inspiring qualities about my mother was that she always painted. My father committed suicide by hanging in our Flesherton forest in 1996. From that came a body of work she called “The Black and White Series” and “The Premonition Drawings”. Like the titles suggest, they are black and white, often interiors of her bedroom with ghostly figures lurking in the shadows.

Did Rae favour figurative work over landscape painting?

My mother didn’t start painting landscapes until the late 1980’s after moving to Flesherton. She said she began in secret, afraid the new subject matter would be perceived as an affront to her well established style of “urban nightmares.” To her, this transition to painting nature was her most daring work. She also proclaimed that painting the sunsets over our Flesherton Pond was where she learned how to paint light. My mother’s paintings have a narrative spirit, and she would alternate between figurative and landscape for the rest of her life, each reflecting her inner soul. 

I believe that good artists are visionaries, often unacknowledged or misunderstood in their own time. After taking on her artistic estate, I have been working alongside the new generation of curators and artists. They seem to understand and appreciate my mother’s work and that of her contemporaries. My mother was ahead of her time, waiting to be rediscovered. 

by Roy Bernardi

John Scott was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, in 1950 and died at the age of 72 in 2022. He was raised in the Cold War era that concerned itself with the imminent threat of nuclear conflict.

A Canadian multimedia artist, Scott, was known for his drawings, paintings and sculpture/installations. His artistic creations have drawn comparisons to those of American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), who similarly explored themes of mortality, destruction, and the disparity between wealth and poverty. In the wake of Basquiat’s passing and his rise to fame, Scott has been dubbed the “Basquiat of Canada.” It is important to note that Scott, being ten years Basquiat’s senior, had already established his artistic identity well before Basquiat’s initial creations.

Renowned for his compulsive mark-making and ironic wit, Scott was a visionary in the art world. He was a long-standing professor in the Faculty of Art at OCAD University, challenging and inspiring his students to develop their individual creative styles and express their innermost thoughts and emotions through their art. Scott was an influential artist within the Toronto art community from the early 1980 until his death through his iconic, political and accessible work. 

Scott’s paintings and sculptures addressed themes of war, industrialization, authority, social class, and fear. For example, he portrayed fighter planes hovering over a blackened earth, cities detached and cast adrift in space, and strange genetic modifications of life. He depicted scenes of political devastation through representations of “twisters” with evil faces, drones, endless tanks whose purpose is surveillance. His many humanlike figures have large bunny-like ears which portray their vulnerability and sensitivity to larger forces.

Scott lived in a large messy studio in the urban core. He regarded people that he encountered with kindness and generosity, whether they were homeless or affluent, students or scholars. He lived out his belief that art should be accessible by gifting everyone who came into his space with a personalized drawing, and his artwork is ubiquitous in the homes of the many people who knew him. His work was also accessible in another way: while the subject matter may be complex, and the readings layered, regardless of their knowledge of art, the audience easily “got” his work. Nowhere is this accessibility better evidenced than in his work, owned by the National Gallery of Canada, titled “Apocalypse Trans-Am.” This installation of a 1981 Trans-Am car covered in black paint with the Book of Revelations scratched into the surface was lauded as one of the most popular works in the gallery’s collection.

Historically, Scott successfully positioned himself as a prominent artist within the art community, as evidenced by his inclusion in art history texts, museum retrospectives, and various collections and exhibitions. He became the first recipient of the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2000. 

Scott’s oeuvre is characterized by a range of pivotal themes, such as “100 Workers, Carnivore, Teddy-Bear, The Bunny-man, The Dark Commander, Trans-am Apocalypse, Jet Fighters, Watch Towers, Tanks, and culminating in the “Night Sky” imagery, which he produced subconsciously, aware that his time was drawing to a close.

“Fallen Angel, “words written on paper by Scott featured in the McMichael Canadian Art Collection’s exhibition Fire Storm, serves as a profound reflection of John Scott’s personal interpretation of his existence within the world. This exhibition presents a diverse array of his works, spanning from his early career to 2015. Among the highlights are a small plastic maquette for “Trans-Am Apocalypse,” created in 1987, which includes incised text, and “The Conqueror Worm,” a sculpture from 1997 constructed from sheet metal, rubber tires, electronic components, paint, and a metal frame. Currently Scott’s work can be viewed at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection; John Scott: Fire Storm exhibition from December 7, 2024 to May 11, 2025.

John Scott works are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as well as every major museum throughout Canada from the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, The Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, The Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, to the Vancouver Art Gallery in British Columbia.

by Roy Bernardi

The art world is a realm where new discoveries occur on a daily basis. While some may argue that finding a life-changing bargain is improbable, the reality is that such opportunities do exist, often emerging unexpectedly. Artworks are unearthed regularly in the most surprising locations. One must simply open their eyes and comprehend what they are observing. A valuable find may be located in an attic, within a museum’s vault, in an antique store, or at an auction where it is misrepresented or mistakenly labeled as “Attributed to ….”  a designation that it is believed to be a work by the artist. “Studio of ….” indicates that it is thought to be a piece created in the artist’s studio or workshop. “Circle of ….” implies that the work is from the artist’s era. “Style of ….” or “Follower of ….” denotes a piece executed in the artist’s style. “Manner of ….” suggests that the work is in the style of the artist but was created at a later time.“After ….” indicates that it is considered a copy of a work by the artist. 

 In October 2024, a notable painting by a Canadian artist, lost for over a century, was rediscovered by a gentleman in England. He acquired the artwork at an auction, which was described as being “in the style of” Helen McNicoll, for just over £2,000.

This long-missing piece by Canadian impressionist Helen McNicoll has been located and authenticated in the United Kingdom by the expert team from the BBC television program “Fake or Fortune?” They have estimated it at approximately £300,000 more or less.

In September 2024, a 17th-century painting by Rembrandt was discovered in an attic in Maine,  USA, and sold for $1.4 million in a record-setting auction. 

The piece, titled Portrait of a Girl, was offered during the annual Summer Grandeur sale at Thomaston Place Auction Galleries, listed as “After Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn  Portrait of a Girl, an oil painting on cradled oak panel, unsigned, with a label from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which had lent it for a 1970 exhibition. Measuring 20 1/2″ x 16 1/2”, it was estimated to fetch between $10,000 and $15,000. 

The bidding was fierce, ultimately resulting in the artwork being acquired by an unnamed European collector.

In February 2014, experts announced the discovery of a long-lost painting attributed to Caravaggio. This artwork, found in a French attic in 2014, has been appraised with a pre sale estimate ranging from €100 million to €150 million. With only 65 known paintings by Caravaggio in existence, this piece represents the 66th, having remained in an attic for over a century.

The painting, which bore signs of age and water damage, was presented to a dealer and appraiser of Old Master artworks in Paris, who confirmed its significance as a lost creation of the renowned Italian Renaissance artist. 

Shortly before its scheduled auction, the painting was sold privately to a foreign buyer, with the details of the sale, including the price and the buyer’s identity, protected by a confidentiality agreement..

August 2014. After a span of 25 years, an oil painting acquired in 1988 for approximately $200 from a Spanish antique shop has been verified as an early Surrealist creation by Salvador Dalí.  

The painter and art historian who bought the artwork, entitled The Intrauterine Birth of Salvador Dalí, had long suspected its attribution to Dalí. His suspicion has now been validated by experts.

Initially, the painting was regarded as the work of an unknown artist due to a signature that dated the piece to 1896, eight years prior to Dalí’s birth. However, a decade of scientific analysis has established the painting’s creation date as 1921, when Dalí was 17 years old, and has revealed underlying black and blue pencil marks, a technique frequently employed by the artist.

Furthermore, handwriting analysis indicated that the inscription on the canvas, a dedication to a teacher corresponds with known samples of Dalí’s handwriting from the 1920s. Tests also revealed that a common spelling error he made had been rectified.

The owner has subsequently sold the artwork to an anonymous collector for an undisclosed sum.

In June 2022, a significant lost painting attributed to a follower of the Italian Renaissance artist Filippino Lippi who completed his apprenticeship in the workshop of Sandro Botticelli, was discovered in a London bungalow and subsequently sold for £255,000 ($321,000) at Dawsons Auctioneers in London, England. The artwork was owned by a woman  in her 90s who transitioned to a nursing home the previous year.

Her family sought the assistance of Dawsons to appraise the residence and its belongings as they initiated the sale of the property to assist with her medical expenses. The woman, who is reported to be suffering from dementia, was originally from Italy and relocated to the United Kingdom in her youth. 

She inherited the painting from her father upon his passing 30 years ago, yet she remained unaware of its significant value and historical relevance. While the auction house has credited the piece to one of Lippi’s followers, the notable final bid indicates that some bidders may believe it to be an original work by Filippino Lippi himself. 

According to the Artnet Price Database, only five paintings by Lippi have fetched higher prices at auction, with a record of $2.3 million established at Christie’s New York in 2005.

In September 2023, a previously lost painting by Artemisia Gentileschi was found in the storeroom of Hampton Court Palace in England. The artwork, titled Susanna and the Elders, had been misattributed for approximately 200 years, initially assigned to a male artist and later to the “French School.” Its rediscovery occurred when experts identified it in relation to a description found in an inventory of Charles I’s art collection.

The English monarch possessed seven paintings by Gentileschi; however, it was believed that only one, Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura), had survived  his execution in 1649. After five years of meticulous conservation efforts, which involved the removal of dirt, overpainting, and previously affixed canvas strips, Gentileschi’s extraordinary portrayal of Susanna and the Elders has now been restored to view. The conservation process also uncovered the “CR,” or “Carolus Rex,” mark on the reverse side of the canvas, thereby further validating the painting’s provenance. 

Commissioned by Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles l, circa 1638 or 1639, the recently uncovered painting illustrates the biblical narrative of Susanna. In this story, Susanna is caught off guard by two men while she is bathing. She rebuffs their propositions, leading them to wrongfully accuse her of infidelity, a charge that carries the death penalty. In the end, Susanna is vindicated.

I have a deep appreciation for the vitality of paintings and artworks, as well as the narratives they embody. They thrive in environments where they are cherished, and their journey continues through time in various contexts and subsequently, living on eternally.