Oeuvres de William Kurelek

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Born on a farm near Willingdon, Alberta in 1927, William Kurelek created paintings that explored the reality of farm life during the Depression, with a focus on Ukrainian experiences in Canada. Kurelek’s mother’s family settled in Canada during one of the first waves of Ukrainian immigration in 1899 before the painter’s father arrived in Alberta from Western Ukraine during the second major wave to the province in 1923. In 1934, Kurelek’s family moved to Manitoba, near Winnipeg, due to falling grain prices and a fire that destroyed their home. Upon moving to Manitoba, Kurelek began attending school at the Victoria Public School.

Influenced by the apprehension surrounding the Depression, World War I, and the instability of farming, Kurelek focused on his studies. However, his father did not approve. While Kurelek’s father valued physical labor on the farm, Kurelek concentrated on school and drawing, which caused tension in his household. As a child, Kurelek covered his room in drawings from literature, dreams, and hallucinations. At school, Kurelek’s classmates were enthralled by his stories and drawings.

In 1943, Kurelek and his brother attended Isaac Newton High School in Winnipeg. While in Winnipeg, he frequented Ukrainian cultural classes offered by St. Mary the Protectress. In 1946, Kurelek enrolled in the University of Manitoba studying Latin, English, and history. While in university, Kurelek’s mental health spiraled, which he later self-identified as depersonalization.

After university, in 1948, Kurelek’s family relocated to a farm near Hamilton, Ontario. The next fall, in 1949, Kurelek began studying at the Ontario College of Art working towards a career in commercial advertising. While in school he was uninterested in the competitiveness and emphasis on earning high grades. So, he decided to study with David Alfaro Siqueiros in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. During his hitchhike to Mexico, Kurelek experienced his first mystical experience while sleeping in the Arizona desert. In this vision, a robed figure asked him to look after his sheep. Upon his arrival to Mexico, Kurelek learned that Siqueiros had departed, and the program was under new direction by Sterling Dickinson. Dickinson’s program was more informal and allowed Kurelek to become aware of social issues and develop his belief system.

Collection de

Kurelek Country

Newfoundland

Newfie Jokes

William Kurelek
Newfie Jokes
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If anything of Newfoundland culture is known to outsiders, it is likely to be the Newfie joke. Exuberant and corny, it usually pokes fun at the stupidity and literalness of either fellow Newfoundlanders or such favorite targets as Americans, Torontonians, and Nova-Scotians

How do you get ten Newfies into a Volkswagen?
Tell them you ‘re going to Toronto

The only reason Newie jokes are so simple is because we want mainlanders to understand them.

It is often the humor of the poor and struggling, a laughter born of a hazardous life in a rocky, misty land. To capture their irrepressible spirit, I have depicted an imaginative setting combining various elements of Newfoundland countryside and way of life – steep cliffs, the changeable sea, small farms, and hard-working people – and encircled it fifteen Newfie jokes. It is a hard life, sometimes a grim life, but jokes provide a form of relief.

Île-du-Prince-Édouard

Potato Planters Admiring Baby Kilders

William Kurelek
Potato Planters Admiring Baby Kilders
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The sea is never far off in Prince Edward Island. Joe Maddix accompanied me on a tour of the coast just three miles from his farm. We drove over a section of a road under construction where freshly scarred earth revealed better than ever its red colour. On the sea’s edge, there were small, oddly located, shingle covered houses sat in clusters, others stood alone, but none had any kind of windbreak to shelter them.

It is this stark, yet colourful, element of Prince Edward Island that I have tried to present in the painting of Potato Framers Admiring Baby Kildeers : the read earth, the green fields, the blue sea and sky. The farmers have paused to watch the kildeers, a ground-nest bird I also knew well out West. Their pleasure in the birds is that hig-and-cuddle feeling onehas toward nature’s babies. Some kildeers have just hatched – little balls of fluff set high on legs thinner than toothpicks. A baby kildeer is a poor escape artist, tripping even over a blade of grass. The mother, meanwhile, tries to attract attention away from the abby by feigning a broken wing.

Saskatchewan

The Barn Dance

William Kurelek
The Barn Dance
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Social life in what they called the “Dirty Thirties” was glorious to my boyish eyes. In the painting The Barn Dance I am the little boy standing high up in the corner, enthralled. Those country dances, which followed the same pattern in the Ukrainian settlements of Saskatchewan as they did in Manitoba, were exciting to watch. As a boy, I usually dreaded dancing and was exciting content to stand on the the sidelines, but I remember one party at the Tomyk’s place where the adults cleared the floor to make room for the children to have a bash at the schottische. It is a dance where partners stand side by side in a circle holding each other one hand by the waist as a I have shown it in the painting.

I recall a summer wedding party held in the hayloft of a Ukrainian neighbor. The young couple were married in a Ukrainian Church in Winnipeg and then drove back to the farm for the celebration. The bride wore the usual North American wedding dress, but the party was Ukrainian. As each family of guests arrived, the orchestra would switch to a special song to mark their entrance. The bride and groom stood at the head table and the guests would approach in couples to wish them well. The man would deposit a gift of five dollars – a grand sum in those days.

Kurelek Country

A Selection of Prints

Story Telling: A Winter Pastime Lithograph
Hunting Caribou
Hunter at Breathing Hole