Christopher Pratt
Canadian Artist of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Fellow of the Canadian Society for Graphic Arts, Officer of the Order of Canada, Companion of the Order
John Christopher Pratt, painter and printmaker (b at St. John's 9 Dec 1935). In 1953, Pratt moved to New Brunswick to study premedicine at Mount Allison University, but soon became interested in the institution's highly regarded fine arts department. Pratt showed some of his paintings to art teachers Alex Colville and Lawren P. Harris, who encouraged him to develop his talent. He abandoned his medical studies and moved to Scotland in 1957 to study at the Glasgow School of Art. Pratt was accompanied by his new wife, artist Mary (West) Pratt.
In 1959, the Pratts returned to Mount Allison. They both graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1961, then moved to Newfoundland, where Christopher accepted the position of curator at the new Memorial University Art Gallery in St. John's (now The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery).
He resigned in 1963 to work full time on his art and moved to the Salmonier community in St. Mary's Bay. Pratt's work was quickly acclaimed and his first solo exhibition took place at the Memorial University Art Gallery in 1965. That same year, he became an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and a Fellow of the Canadian Society for Graphic Art.
Pratt became one of Canada's most successful and respected artists. His art has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally and collected by leading galleries. He was the subject of several major publications, including Christopher Pratt (1982), Christopher Pratt: A Retrospective (1985), The Prints of Christopher Pratt: 1958-1991 (1991), Christopher Pratt: Personal Reflections on a Life in Art (1995), and Christopher Pratt: Six Decades (2013).
In 1973, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada and was elevated to the rank of Companion in 1983. He received honorary degrees from Memorial University (1972), Mount Allison University (1972) and from Dalhousie University (1986); and was made an honorary member of the Ontario College of Art (1990). In 1980, he designed the provincial flag of Newfoundland and Labrador.
A strong sense of place permeates Pratt's art and he explores many themes: the physical landscape and distinctive architecture of Newfoundland, the ocean, ships, interior spaces, the socio-political realities affecting the province and the human figure. He works primarily with oil paints, watercolours, lithographs and serigraphs, but occasionally uses other mediums, such as woodcut and collage.
Pratt's work is held in numerous private and public collections, including the permanent collection of the provincial art gallery The Rooms, the National Gallery of Canada, Mount Allison University, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Canada Council Art Bank and the Vancouver Art Gallery.
He continues to work from his home in St. Mary's Bay.
He is well known for his meticulous and impeccable studies depicting typical Atlantic settings, stripped of all unnecessary detail. He concentrates on the images drawn from his memories. His gaze on Newfoundland transforms it into another country. He makes it a harsh land with pronounced contrasts. His architectural studies are equally sober, orderly and devoid of sentimentality. All his works evoke a feeling of loneliness and harshness, an austere beauty, the simple reality of life.
The figures in Pratt's portraits evoke the same distant, haunting, yet vigorous reality. Sometimes their fearful sensuality disturbs the quiet existence that Pratt portrays. He is, with Colville, one of the greatest classical painters of contemporary Canadian painting. A major traveling retrospective of the artist's works took place in Canada in 1986.
-Source: Heritage NewFoundland & Labrador website, https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/arts/christopher-pratt.php
- Source: Joan Morray, The Canadian Encyclopedia, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/pratt-john-christopher
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