I finished school and moved to Calgary to join Helen in the summer of 1988. We were both at the U of C that summer just in time to see Personal Mythologies/Images of the Milieu a solo show by the Canadian artist Ivan Eyre at The Nickle Gallery. One day a week admission was free (we had little money) and I was there every lunch hour. Later the library I worked in in Calgary held Eyre's large painting Floodwood, a strange merger of still life and landscape typical of the artist. Another library and I shared my office with a print of his landscape Red Hill. Since my first viewing of his work Eyre has not just shared my personal space through his works but also my imaginative space through his oft repeated images of wheeled horse, giants shapes in the sky and hornblowers. I have collected show catalogues, books and a few works. He has influenced how I view the cityscapes and the landscapes of the prairies in which I have spent most of my life. As Helen once said after seeing his cityscapes one learns to look up at the tops of the tall buildings to catch a glimpse of the Eyre hornblowers silhouetted against the prairie sky.
Obituary
https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/winnipeg-mb/ivan-eyre-11003438
Wikipedia entry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Eyre
A lovely youtube clip of Eyre in his studio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4URm0196QjM
Thank you Ivan.
