Over the decades, Ivan Eyre has developed a personal mythology inspired by his own imagination and by a strong sense of kinship with the Canadian Prairies, the region in which he has spent the greater part of his life. Eyre renders this attachment through purely panoramic landscapes, but also through sophisticated self-portraits and meticulously composed still lifes, thanks in part to a masterful drawing technique. Even as he calls upon various styles and trends— cubism, surrealism, expressionism—he remains true to an eminently personal artistic process, informed by an existential and metaphysical sensibility. Drawing is the principal foundation of Eyre’s visual vocabulary, an element we see in this richly pigmented and compositionally bold painting titled Nest Rest (1970). Between figuration and abstraction, Nest Rest offers an original vision, if not of the artist’s studio, at least of his working or living environment. In 1998, Eyre wrote, “Imagination is my guide. I follow it and lead it into a world largely built on my drawings. It may be in response to a real-time visual phenomenon found in my travels, or to the close-up intrigue of a busy table in the studio or kitchen.”[1] Here, paper, string, fabric, and patterns are strewn in a work space that likely represents creative work in progress, or even the act of creation itself.
Ivan Kenneth Eyre was born in Tullymet, Saskatchewan, in 1935. During high school, he got to know the work of Ernest Lindner at the Saskatoon Technical Collegiate Institute, and that of Eli Bornstein at the University of Saskatchewan. After earning a BFA at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art in 1957, he pursued graduate studies in the United States, at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. He then returned to Manitoba, where he taught drawing and painting at his alma mater until 1992, the year of his retirement. In 1965, the Canada Council for the Arts awarded him a grant that allowed him to work and study intensively in Europe until 1967. Eyre took part in both solo and group exhibitions throughout Canada and abroad. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and has received both the Queen Elizabeth II Silver and Gold Jubilee medals, as well as the Order of Manitoba. He lives and works in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
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[1] Cité sur le site Internet du Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, dans la fiche de l’artiste. Source: (article consulté en février 2021). / Cited on the National Gallery of Canada website, in the artist’s profile. Source: (article consulted in February 2021).
