‘A true westerner’: Exhibit showcases the art of Illingworth ‘Buck’ Kerr​on February 6, 2025 at 7:00 pm

When Illingworth Kerr was attending the Ontario College of Art in the 1920s, one his instructors made some disparaging marks about his home.

This wasn’t just any instructor. It was Arthur Lismer, a landscape artist of some renown and a member of the Group of Seven. As a teacher, Lismer had certainly given Kerr some sound advice. He once told the young painter to “look for the design in nature” when Kerr asked about the Group of Seven style.

But Lismer and others in the Group of Seven who taught Kerr in Toronto – including J.E.H. MacDonald and Frederick Varley – had “written off the Prairies” when it came to finding inspiration in nature, says Mary-Beth Laviolette, an arts writer and curator of Through Brush & Spirit: The Legacy of Illingworth “Buck” Kerr at the Loch Gallery. This did not sit well with Kerr, who was born and raised in Lumsden, Sask.

“Arthur Lismer makes this famous comment in a class that Kerr is in: ‘Well, we didn’t go to the Prairies because there is nothing really interesting to paint there except maybe telephone poles,’ ” she says. “That absolutely outraged Kerr because he knew in his heart that – the mood, the colour of the sky, the landscape itself – there was a lot to be explored and interpreted.”

Kerr, who died in 1989, is certainly a familiar name for many Calgarians. There is a gallery named after him at the Alberta University of the Arts, a tribute to the 20 years he was head of the school from 1947 to 1967. After attending the Ontario College of Art, he returned to his hometown and tried his best to make a living from art. He had a home studio above a pool hall. He tried to make a living from his art but often had to take on jobs painting signs or on a farm crew during harvest. He also ran traplines. In the 1930s, he left Canada and lived in Britain for several years. There were stints in Montreal and Vancouver, where he began to teach. In 1947, he came to Calgary to head up the art department of The Tech, which is now known as SAIT. It was during his tenure that the art department split from The Tech to become the Alberta College of Art (it has since been renamed the Alberta University of the Arts).

“He was the one who really gave some structure to the college, got some very good people to teach like Luke Lindoe and he made it into an art college,” Laviolette says. “It was an art college that was very successful in terms of the number of artists who came out and ended up developing national reputations. You have to give him a lot of credit for that. He was at that job for 20 years.”

But Laviolette said his lasting legacy as a landscape painter is linked to his devotion to home. Like the Group of Seven, Kerr’s guiding principle was to know and celebrate his country. Unlike them, much of his work was dedicated to the diverse landscapes of southern Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Through Brush & Spirit, which runs at the Loch Gallery until Feb. 22, features work dating back to the 1920s. But its focus is on Kerr’s most productive period in the 1970s and 1980s. This was after he retired from the Alberta College of Art. With his eyesight starting to fade, Kerr dedicated himself fully to his artwork.