Former arts professor receives Governor General’s award

Kenneth Lochhead

(Photo:
Martin Lipman)

Famous Canadian painter and former University of Ottawa professor Kenneth Lochhead was among the seven artists awarded who received a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, on March 22, 2006.

The award, funded and administered by the Canada Council for the Arts, recognizes lifetime achievement, as well as outstanding contributions through voluntarism, philanthropy or professional activities. The National Gallery of Canada is presenting an exhibition to celebrate the winners and their works from March 24 to July 3, 2006.

Kenneth Lochhead was one of the famous Regina Five, a group of Canadian abstract painters who achieved renown in 1961 for a landmark exhibition presented at the National Gallery of Canada. As a teacher for 14 years in the Department of Visual Arts, he also had a major influence on a generation of Canadian artists.

“A prolific artist, he has produced a monumental and unique oeuvre whose mainstay is colour, whether working in oils, watercolours or as a muralist,” wrote independent curator Anna Babinska in an essay for the Canada Council. “He has been called eclectic, eccentric, fantastic — characteristics which only begin to define the singularity and versatility of his art. His art practice has been seamlessly interwoven with a distinguished career as a teacher and advisor.”

Born in Ottawa in 1926, Lochhead studied art at Queen’s University, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Philadelphia) and the Barnes Foundation (Merion, Pennsylvania). In 1950, he was appointed director of the School of Art, Regina College, University of Saskatchewan. After stints teaching in Regina, Winnipeg and Toronto, he returned to Ottawa in the early 1970s. He taught at the University of Ottawa from 1975 until 1989.

Since 1953, Lochhead has shown his varied work (his recent focus is on landscape painting) in numerous solo and group exhibitions in both public and private galleries in Canada and abroad.