Full Text Transcriptions

Essays and Articles about and by
Ronald L. Bloore

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In this letter from New York to the Art Forum in Canadian Art magazine Bloore does not mince words in attacking the provincialism he has left behind.

This article for Canadian Art illustrates Bloore's views on such things as what it is to be a painter, how art should be appreciated and how it should be analyzed. Most importantly, though, it illuminates the wonderous work of Jan Wyers.

Now, as back then, I consider it to be one of the few major iconic visions in the art of Canada or of the Great Plains.

Morton's bold imagery is difficult to place within a Canadian visual art milieu because his roots seem to be in the apparently contradictory sources of pre-war French Purism and German Expressionism... His individual, recognizable manner of image-making retains something of Purism's simplified shapes and the potency of Expressionism's colours...

The curator, Illi Maria Harff-Tamplin, retiring as Director of the AGP, had two ideas for her third and last Bloore show. First was the need for a retrospective that would display the paintings done since Not Without Design in 1991, with emphasis on the startling new Dark Chocolates. And second was an examination of the emergence (revelation?) of the masonite substrate as the field in the new panels, a subject Tamplin analyses in this catalogue essay in relation to the gold-leaf grounds of Bloore's beloved Byzantine and Japanese art.

Ronald L. Bloore
Not Without Design

by Terrence Heath

This is the fullest analysis yet published of Bloore's ideas on art and art making. These five website pages contain the entire english text which runs over 17,000 words and is the only such large work here. The essay was published in the catalogue of its eponymous traveling show organized with Andrew Oko of the Mackenzie Gallery.

How can so little go so far wide? Some of the sops of fame.

Border Crossings Magazine at
Not Without Design:
The Regina Five Interviews

by Robert Enright

When Terrence Heath's Bloore Retrospective touched down in Regina's Mackenzie Gallery, all the five were there. This article was printed in the Winter 1993 issue, Vol. 12 No. 1, with the title "Roy Kiyooka and the Regina Five."

"The unexpected announcement was received with a standing ovation." The Globe and Mail reported on the opening at the Art Gallery of Peterborough of the "Drawings 1960 - 1988" show. The catalogue essay by Illi Tamplin is below.

"This exhibition of my work was completely hers. It was her development, her selection, her concept. She never faltered in the development of the show, though often she was challenged by the enormity of the decisions. She selected the frames, she wrote and designed the catalogue. She even corrected my biography!"

"The Regina 5 Exhibition Number Two, a display of 25 paintings (five each)...[that ends] after only three days in Creemore since the basketball stars-to-be will be wanting their gym back. But the show will go on..."

"For a painter who has never had an exhibition to call his own, Ronald Bloore owns a considerable reputation. His paintings have been bought by the National Gallery and some important private collectors, he was included in the Canadian display at last year's Sao Paulo biennial..."

"When Regina's university art gallery opened an exhibition "Images and Studies" by a local unknown named Win Hedore, Gallery Director Ronald L. Bloore - a telegram in hand - regretfully announced that the artist could not be present. That seemed to be a sensible precaution on Hedore's part...."