A Life of Its Own: Chris Huntington and the Resurgence of Nova Scotia Folk Art, 1975-1995

Patricia Whitney, former coordinator of Women’s Studies at the
University if Prince Edward Island, is the Bank of Montreal Visiting
Scholar in Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa.

The term “folk art” comes with plenty of baggage. There is the whiff
of scholarly elitism, a problem not alleviated by similar tags such as
outsider art, self-taught art, or naive and vernacular art. There
remains the notion that such unpretentious artworks—paintings,
carvings, drawings, or assemblages—belong outside the art
establishment.

Ken Martin, curator of this fine show at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia
in 1997, has written a delightful catalogue that presents these Maritime
folk artists and their works with dignity, while honoring the
extraordinary collector, Chris Huntington, and his wife Charlotte
McGill, on whose collection A Life of Its Own is based.

Martin acknowledges Huntington as an astute collector, sincere admirer,
and skilful promoter of Nova Scotia’s folk artists, even as he admits
the effect that Huntington has had on the artists’ works. This is a
dilemma similar to that presented, say, by any discussion of James
Houston’s influence on Inuit printmaking, an art form foreign to the
Inuit before Houston’s intervention, but one that has resulted in an
art practice of great significance. In other words, the presence of an
astute collector will influence art making and the results are bound to
be different from precontact practice.

The catalogue nicely balances an examination of Huntington’s
influence with a celebration of the artists and their works. The color
plates and black-and-white illustrations show visions of retired
fishermen and woodsmen and farmers whose artists’ statements are as
fresh as a coastal breeze: “I just done it for fun.”

Ralph Boutilier’s monumental sculptures, Joe Norris’s decorated sea
chest, and Albert Lohnes’s yarn-covered furniture are outstanding
examples of works of great presence, free of formal constraints. Stanley
Rector’s “Brian Mulroney, 1990,” in polychrome wood, strips away
the smile to reveal a thin mouth and large—one might say
grasping—hands; there is no escaping such art.