Artist Information
Barbara Milne
RCA
Moving from Toronto to Calgary over 40 years ago, I had not anticipated the powerful draw of the foothills and mountains. Nor did I see how such vastness would bring about an enhanced appreciation of the minutia from which such vistas are formed. As I began to contemplate the idea of working within the theme of landscape I was inspired by the works of Georgia O’Keefe, Arthur Dove, and Emily Carr, artists who ventured into abstraction and whose works I regard as meditations on the essence of place, both external and internal.
Along with direct observation, sketching and photography, I have, for the past decade, used collage as a creative lens that enables me to subvert the logic and order of what I experience and observe. Through editing and amplification of details, I am looking at our fragile relationship to the land, pondering ideas of stewardship, vulnerability and even loneliness. Through subjects of the landscape and still life, I am ever reminded of temporality - of presence and absence - nature as we encounter it and as we remember it…
b. Windsor, Ontario
EDUCATION
1979 Bachelors of Fine Arts, (4 year Honours Degree): York University, Toronto
AWARDS
2009 ACAD Professional
Development Funding – Gullkistan Residency, Iceland
2008 ACAD Professional
Development Funding for Vancouver Exhibition, April 2008 Alberta Foundation for
the Arts Project Grant
2004 Nominated and elected
to the Royal Canadian Academy
2003 Alberta Foundation for
The Arts Project Grant
1998 Alberta Foundation for
The Arts Project Grant
COLLECTIONS
Canadian Embassy, Brussels,Belgium
Alberta Foundation for the Arts
Whyte Museum of Canadian Rockies
Canada Council Art Bank
Calgary Allied Arts Foundation
Glenbow Museum
Air Canada
Nickle Arts Museum
Bank of America
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2022 Wallace Galleries Ltd, Calgary
2019 Edge Gallery Calgary
2017 Paul Kuhn Gallery
2016-2017 Responding To the Collection of the Whyte Museum
2013 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary
2012 Edge Gallery, Canmore
2011 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary
2008 Nickle Arts Museum
Atelier Gallery, Vancouver
Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary
2006 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary
2004 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary
2003 Atelier Gallery, Vancouver
2002 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary
2001 Atelier Gallery, Vancouver
2000 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary
1998 Atelier Gallery, Vancouver
Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary
James Baird Gallery, St. John’s, Nfld.
1997 Atelier Gallery, Vancouver
1996 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2020 The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Drawn to the West
Artistic Pairings, Herringer Kiss Gallery, Calgary
Last Picture Show, Edge Gallery, Calgary
2018 Two Person Show with Dave More,The Edge Gallery in Canmore
2017 Audain Art Museum,Whistler, BC : Stone and Sky: Canada’s Mountain Landscape
Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies:New Acquisitions
2012 Faculty Exhibition ACAD
2011 The National Capital Commission (NCC), in collaboration with the Canada Council Art Bank, Provincial and Territorial Confederation Boulevard Banners. Represented Alberta
Faculty Exhibition ACAD
2010 Faculty Exhibition ACAD
2009 Gullkistan Artist Residency,Iceland - 2 Person Show
Art Gallery of Calgary, Gallery Without Walls: Celebrating 50 Years, Calgary Allied Arts Foundation -
50 Artists from the Calgary Civic Art Collection
2008 Art Gallery of Alberta “The Essence of Landscape” The Alberta Foundation for the Arts Travelling Exhibition Program
Alberta College of Art – Faculty Exhibition
2007 Nickle Arts Museum – “Alberta Formed” – work from the permanent collection
Alberta College of Art and Design - Print Exhibition “Collaborations”
MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina “From Where I Stand”
Contemporary Landscapes by Canadian Artists
2005 Alberta High Commission, Washington DC
2003-2005 Ilingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art, Faculty Show
2000 Nickle Arts Museum, University of Calgary,
“INLAND: Narrative in Western Landscape”
1999 Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, Alberta
“The Path To Skoki”
1998 Art Gallery of Nfld. And Labrador, St. John’s
“The Painters Newfoundland”
1997 The Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton
“Celebrating a Legacy” Alberta Foundation for the Arts 25th. Anniversary Exhibition
1996 McMichael Gallery, Ontario
“Hidden Values”, Contemporary Canadian Art Corporate Collections
Drabinsky Gallery, Toronto, Summer Exhibition
ARTS JURIES
2002 Grant Jury, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Edmonton, Alberta
1996 Grant Jury, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Edmonton, Alberta
1988 Art Bank Slide Jury, Ottawa, Ontario
RESIDENCIES AND WORKSHOPS
July 2009 Gullkistan 2 week Artist Residency, Iceland
Sept. 1998 “The Path to Skoki” A week long hiking and painting trip to Skoki, Alberta.
Sponsored by the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, Alberta
July 1997 Pouch Cove Residency Programme, A month long, painting and research in preparation for 22
person group exhibition at Art Gallery of Labrador, St. John’s, Nfld., entitled, “Painters’ Newfoundland
August 1993 “Columbia Icefield Expedition” A week long hiking trip to paint and research in
preparation for exhibition at Whyte Museum of Canadian Rockies.
TEACHING
1998 - 2012 Sessional Instructor at The Alberta College of Art and Design, Painting Department
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bovey, Patricia. “Western Voices in Canadian Art”, University of Manitoba Press, Winnipeg, Manitoba; 2023. 156 p.
“Painting the Whyte” Portia Priegart, Galleries West 2016
Smith, Caroline, CBC Radio Interview for “Overland” Exhibition, Jan. 2009
Salahub,Jennifer, Paths,Corridors and Intervals, Exhibition Essay for Catalogue “Overland” 2008
Christine Sowiak, The Cadance of Land, Exhibition Essay fo Catalogue “Overland” 2008
Tousley, Nancy, Barbara Milne: Critic’s Pick Calgary Herald October 2008
Robin Laurence Barbara Milne: Overland and Erin McSavaney: Seven Paintings of South Vancouver Georgia Strait, April 17, 2008
Patricia Ainslie and Mary-Beth Laviolette, An Illustrated Guide to a Hundred and Fifty Years of Alberta Art, 150 pages, soft cover
2007
Mary-Beth Laviolette, Alberta Art Cronicle: A history of Contemporary Art in Alberta: 1970 to 2000, 300 Pages, soft cover
Vida,Sandra, Prairie Landscapes are Humming with Life, Fast Forward, May 2nd. 2002
Gustafson,Paula, Barbara Milne at Atelier Gallery,Asian Art News,Jan. 1999
Laviolette,Mary-Beth, The Skoki Expedition, Artichoke, Feb 1999
Severson, Ann. A Prairie Girl’s Maritimes, Fast Forward, May 1998
Woodrow, Paul, The Spectacle of Memory, Exhibition Essay for Catalogue,”Island” 1998
Tousley, Nancy, Brush with Beauty, Calgary Herald Dec. 6th. 1996
Johnson, Mia, Preview, Preview Magazine, Nov. 1995
Lawrence, Robin, Saturday Review, The Vancouver Sun, Nov. 4th. 1999
Milne - Woven Exhition e-Catalog 2022
November 19-December 7, 2022
Opening reception: November 19; 2-5pm; Artist in attendance
Woven, an exhibition of oil paintings by Barbara Milne, will open November 19th 2022 at Calgary’s Wallace Galleries. At its heart is a selection of works completed over the past three years. For this exhibition, the artist has drawn inspiration from her observation of the natural world, her knowledge of historical art, and from her extensive collection of textiles, photography, collage, and earlier pieces in her studio. Past work speaks to new work in an ongoing conversation - netting a full range of expression.
Drawing on her love of textiles, Milne chose to call the exhibition Woven likening it to a length of woolen tweed, a seemingly simple warp and weft construction which, upon closer scrutiny, proves to be an increasingly complex and seductive read. Such is the case here. In these paintings, what might appear as a singular colour from a distance, reveals itself to be overlapping colours, tones, lines and shapes. The juxtaposition of the unexpected. A surface may be transparent in some areas yet richly built up in others. In Milne’s work the close up and distant views are presented simultaneously, resulting in landscapes that are both intimate in the form of a garden and majestic such as the glacier at Lake Louise.