Terry Fenton (born July 1, 1940) is a Canadian artist, author, critic, and curator known for his landscape paintings, his support of

modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

art, and his writing on the work of artists such as

Jack Bush John Hamilton Bush (March 20, 1909 – January 24, 1977) was a Canadian abstract painter. A member of Painters Eleven, his paintings are associated with the Color Field movement and Post-painterly Abstraction. Inspired by Henri Ma ...

Anthony Caro Sir Anthony Alfred Caro (8 March 192423 October 2013) was an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using ' found' industrial objects. His style was of the modernist school, having worked with Henry Moor ...

, Peter Hide,

Dorothy Knowles Dorothy Elsie Knowles, (born April 6, 1927) is a Canadian artist, most notable for her landscape paintings. She is the widow of William Perehudoff, a fellow artist who is closely associated with the Color Field movement. Career Knowles studie ...

, Ken Macklin,

Kenneth Noland Kenneth Noland (April 10, 1924 – January 5, 2010) was an American painter. He was one of the best-known American color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was though ...

Jules Olitski Jevel Demikovski (March 27, 1922 – February 4, 2007), known professionally as Jules Olitski, was an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor. Early life Olitski was born Jevel Demikovsky in Snovsk, in Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic ( ...

, and William Perehudoff. Fenton is the former director of the

Edmonton Art Gallery The Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA) is an art museum in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The museum occupies a building at Churchill Square in downtown Edmonton. The museum building was originally designed by Donald G. Bittorf, and B. James Wensley, alth ...

(1972 - 1987), the A.C. Leighton Foundation,

Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, makin ...

(1987 - 1993) and the

Mendel Art Gallery The Mendel Art Gallery was a major creative cultural centre in City Park, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Operating from 1964 to 2015, it housed a permanent collection of more than 7,500 works of art. The gallery was managed by the city-owned Saskatoon G ...

Saskatoon Saskatoon () is the largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It straddles a bend in the South Saskatchewan River in the central region of the province. It is located along the Trans-Canada Hig ...

(1993 - 1997). Since 2013, Fenton has resided in

Victoria, British Columbia Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of 91,867, and the Greater Victoria area has a population of 397,237. Th ...

Education

Terry Fenton was born in

Regina, Saskatchewan Regina () is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province, after Saskatoon, and is a commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. As of the 2021 C ...

in 1940, and studied at Regina College's School of Fine Art (now

University of Regina The University of Regina is a public research university located in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Founded in 1911 as a private denominational high school of the Methodist Church of Canada, it began an association with the University of Saskatchew ...

) from 1958–1960, with Ronald Bloore,

Roy Kiyooka Roy Kenzie Kiyooka (January 18, 1926January 8, 1994) was a Canadian painter, poet, photographer, arts teacher, and multi-media artist. Biography A Nisei, or a second generation Japanese Canadian, Roy Kenzie Kiyooka was born in Moose Jaw, Saskat ...

, and

Arthur McKay Arthur Fortescue McKay, best known as Art McKay (September 11, 1926 – August 3, 2000) was a Canadian painter and a member of The Regina Five. Many of his works are modernist abstractions. Early life and education McKay was born in Nipawin, ...

. Moving to the Saskatoon campus to study English literature, Fenton earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1962. Along with studies at the

(1965-1966), Fenton attended Emma Lake Artist's Workshops in Saskatchewan with

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...

and

Lawrence Alloway Lawrence Reginald Alloway (17 September 1926 – 2 January 1990) was an English art critic and curator who worked in the United States from 1961. In the 1950s, he was a leading member of the Independent Group in the UK and in the 1960s was an i ...

in 1965,

Frank Stella Frank Philip Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. Stella lives and works in New York City. Biography Frank Stella was born in M ...

in 1967, and Michael Steiner in 1969.

Painting

The imagery in Terry Fenton's paintings is often focused on the large skies and wide open prairies of his home province. In Fenton's words:

"Because of their apparent lack of scenery, the open prairies haven't been much painted by anyone. Even painters who've flourished in Saskatchewan have preferred the river valleys in the plains or the aspen parkland and forest to the north and east. While I admire and have absorbed much from them, I'm drawn south and west to the grasslands, partly because I was born and raised in Regina, but especially because the colour and light there is so luminous."

Fenton's paintings can be found in a number of collections, including the

University of Lethbridge , mottoeng = ''Let there be light'' , type = Public , established = , academic_affiliations = Universities Canada , endowment = $73 million (2019) , chancellor = Charles Weasel ...

, Alberta; the

MacKenzie Art Gallery The MacKenzie Art Gallery (MAG; french: Musee d’art MacKenzie) is an art museum located in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The museum occupies the multipurpose T. C. Douglas Building, situated at the edge of the Wascana Centre. The building holds e ...

, Regina; the

Art Gallery of Greater Victoria The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV) is an art museum located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Situated in Rockland, Victoria, the museum occupies a building complex; made up of the Spencer Mansion, and the Exhibition Galleries. The ...

, British Columbia; and the Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa.

Writing

Fenton's writing on art has touched on subjects both historical and contemporary, from essays on

Fayum mummy portraits Mummy portraits or Fayum mummy portraits are a type of naturalistic painted portrait on wooden boards attached to upper class mummies from Roman Egypt. They belong to the tradition of panel painting, one of the most highly regarded forms of ar ...

and

Giovanni Bellini Giovanni Bellini (; c. 1430 – 26 November 1516) was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. He was raised in the household of Jacopo Bellini, formerly thought to have been his father ...

's '' St. Francis in Ecstasy,'' to articles on

Morris Louis Morris Louis Bernstein (November 28, 1912 – September 7, 1962), known professionally as Morris Louis, was an American painter. During the 1950s he became one of the earliest exponents of Color Field painting. While living in Washington, D.C ...

and

Adolph Gottlieb Adolph Gottlieb (March 14, 1903 – March 4, 1974) was an American abstract expressionist painter, sculptor and printmaker. Early life and education Adolph Gottlieb, one of the "first generation" of Abstract Expressionists, was born in New Yo ...

. Fenton has written a number of books, including

monograph A monograph is a specialist work of writing (in contrast to reference works) or exhibition on a single subject or an aspect of a subject, often by a single author or artist, and usually on a scholarly subject. In library cataloging, ''monograph ...

s on

, Reta Cowley,

and

, as well as his 2009 treatise on pictorial art, "About Pictures."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fenton, Terry Living people 1940 births 20th-century Canadian painters Canadian male painters Canadian landscape painters Canadian art critics Canadian art curators Directors of museums in Canada Artists from Regina, Saskatchewan 20th-century Canadian male artists