Artist Profiles

Patricia Richardson Logie

Retrospective: A lifetime of Logie on display Chronicles of Pride - A Journey of Discover Kahtou Salutes First Nations Elders back to Patricia Logie home page click on images to enlarge

Retrospective: A lifetime of Logie on display by : Jan De Grass -- Coast Reporter, 2004 How to display a lifetime of achievement -- over 30 years of art -- in one show? That's the challenge for the Gibson's Public Art Gallery this month when they open a retrospective, Lifescapes, of the work of Hopkins Landing artist Patricia Richardson Logie. Logie is a prolific, talented and professional artist, a signature member of the Federation of Canadian Artists and a founding member of the Canadian Institute of Portrait Artists. Though her subject matter varies widely, she has specialized in portraiture, often by commission, and considers her crowning achievement to be a collection of 31 paintings of aboriginal people entitled Chronicles of Pride. The Gibson's Public Art Gallery is a little gallery, with less than a year of existence, staffed by volunteers, yet they were not daunted by this huge project. Guest curator Donna Hobbs was eager. Hobbs is new to the coast, about one year; she has minored in art, studied interior design and once ran a business making artistic custom furniture. She met Logie only recently and the two clicked. Hobbs was immediately caught up in the scope of Logie's work, the quality, the diversity and how hungry Logie was to talk about it. "This show is a natural fit for the Coast," Hobbs says. "An artist of such quality lives here and not everyone has seen her work." Hobbs helped Logie date and catalogue the work, and then selected the pieces from various stages of her career. "She's chosen pieces I would never have thought to put in a show," says Logie, including work from her student days in London. The show of 48 paintings, mostly oil on canvas, depicts a variety of scenes including rainy days spent in the studio, the canyons and scenery of B.C. under the hot Okanagan sun, local scenes, two engaging pictures of children in the choir, gypsy faces and a few of her rich and sensual nudes that capture the beauty of form and light. The paintings should stand alone, says Hobbs, and part of the mandate of the gallery is simply to show the work of local artists for all to enjoy. One collection that is not for sale individually is the Chronicles of Pride series, portraits of aboriginal people, a project that Logie took on when she became disgusted with how native people were portrayed in textbooks and to the public. She wanted to paint the people as contributors to society, with pride in their faces. She succeeded, and has since been honoured by various aboriginal organizations for her work. Logie would like to keep the collection together and must find a home for it. Small photographic reproductions of this series will be on show at the Gallery. Like any true artist, Logie is most excited by her latest work, something new and almost abstract. She had a stroke just before Christmas, she explains, with the attendant loss of sensation in her fingers. She can't complete the fine brushwork necessary for portraits, so she's painting big and broad now. "I always told my students not to paint with just their fingers," she says. "Paint with your whole arm. That's what I'm doing now, broad paintings, and I'm so excited I can't wait to get back to them." These newer, different pieces will form a series on the spirit of trees -- one of them will be on display at the gallery show and another is at Westwind Gallery. Logie was born in Ontario and wanted to be a painter from the age of 12. In 1970, she moved to England to study at Sir John Cass College in London where she exhibited extensively. She has shown her work in Canada and other countries over 32 times and often holds an open house in her Hopkins' studio in the summer months. She will be present at the launch of Lifescapes today (July 10, 2004) from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Gibson's Public Art Gallery, 271 Gower Point Road. Chronicles of Pride - A Journey of Discover Deiselig Enterprises Limited, 1990. 196 pp. $27.95cl. by : Nancy-Lou Patterson-- Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Waterloo - 1994 This useful and appealing volume of portraits and biographical vignettes, written by its artist-author, begins with a foreword by Georges Erasmus, written while he was National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. "The younger generations," he writes, "must learn from the wisdom of the older generation." Thirty of the portraits -- fourteen women and nineteen men (three of whom appear in a single work) -- depict "individuals" who "are an example of that leadership, contributing in their own way to make a better life -- to procure harmony and unity in all living things" (p.3). The thirty-first depicts members of the younger generation -- three young women and two young men. Working through the better part of a decade since 1982. Patricia Logie has created a forceful visual record of people from Canada's First Nations, celebrating their accomplishments and their seafhood. Each portrait is accompanied by a brief biography and a longer passage providing striking insights into both the portraitist and the portrayed. Logie's open, not to say ingenuous, personality has elicited a series of vigorous, forthright, and significant responses from the people who consented to be depicted. What emerges, both in the portraits and in the anecdotal memoirs, is that precious phenomenon, true meeting, the artist bestows her gift -- a capacity to record in paint her experience of a specific human being -- in a form long used in European and Euro-Canadian culture to impute value. Those who have agreed to pose have become active participants in the process. The paintings are lively and colourful, fully accessible to a wide audience. The agenda here is quite outside of contemporary art criticism, and probably should be. But the book contains more than its visual portraits, and thus provides a series of primary documents of considerable interest, including quotations and descriptions of conversations. Here, the vivid personalities of these accomplished people are documented. The Honourable Len Marchand (Okanagan), for instance, the first Native cabinet minister in Canada's federal government, filled his posing time by lecturing the artist on the subjects of Canadian politics and Louis Riel. For her part, Mildred Gottfriedson (Shuswap), Canadian Mother of the Year for 1964, provides a series of trenchant remarks on the long struggle for the rights of Aboriginal women. Chronicles of Pride would be an excellent choice for school, church, institutional, and public libraries, both on and off reserves, as a useful educational tool, and as a chronicle of the human spirit. KAHTOU SALUTES FIRST NATIONS ELDERS - Distinguished Citizens as Resource by : Doug West -- Vancouver - 1990 The combination of the book 'Chronicles of Pride - A Journey of Discover' and a 28 minute video entitled 'Chronicles of Pride' has been released to immortalize some of the contemporary heros and heroines of the First Nations people. Patricia Richardson Logie's book of paintings is an anthology of 31 examples of success in the native community. The result of eight years of dedication and sensitive articulation, the book profiles respected elders, chiefs, native leaders, educators, artists and recognized role models. Logie is a highly recognized portrait painter who has been working in oils and pastels for thirty years. Dismayed by the distraught images of native people in a text book, Logie was compelled to create portraits of First Nations people who represented strength, quiet determination, participation and contribution. This became a road of learning that would introduce Logie to accomplished natives' like Dr. Louis Miranda, Verna Kirkness, Daphne Odjig Beavon, simon Baker and many more. Logie expresses her ability to portray the person she has come to know with the highlights of their personality in the forefront." The video 'Chronicles of Pride," produced and directed by Loretta Todd, highlights five of these subjects in an emphatic presentation of the lives they live. The video portrays Gloria George, Judge Alfred Scow, Dorothy Francis, Vivian Wilson and the late Blance MacDonald with the honest insight provided by a lot of their own archival footage. "Everyone was wonderful. They showed their great depth of experience in a dignity of sharing knowledge," said Todd. Sponsored by the Indian and Northern Affairs Canada and the United Native Nations, the video was conceived to exemplify role models for youth and the general public. With the intention of being used with Logie's book as a resource guide, the set will be made available to friendship centres, libraries and tribal councils. Chronicles of Pride is scheduled to be aired on 'the Knowledge' Network sometime in February, 1991. back to Patricia Logie home page