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“Art is an occupation” – Dr. Gavigan

August 1, 2013   ·   0 Comments

Roving artist Dr. Keith Gavigan has bounced from Europe to North America and back once or twice taking his art skills and teaching methods with him wherever he goes. Now he finds himself in town with his newly opened School of Fine Art Tottenham and ready for a new challenge.

He’s no stranger to taking on a challenge. Before coming back to Canada last year, Dr. Gavigan, originally from Northern Scotland, completed his dissertation in Norway.

“The reason for going to Norway was to build a university level art academy and run it up to a master’s degree to see if my theories of teaching would actually work in a country that doesn’t encourage creative art education,” he said.

According to Dr. Gavigan, art is not considered an occupation in Norway and therefore is generally not encouraged or financed.

That experience went swimmingly well for Dr. Gaviga, as the art program flourished at the Norway University. Now at 74 years young, his goal is to do the same thing in Tottenham after moving there last year.

“My son was living close by and a good friend mine for 40 years was working here, so I thought, ‘I’m divorced and footloose and fancy free, I’ll move into the district,’ but then when I got here, I realized there was nothing really happening in Tottenham [in terms of art] so I thought it would be the perfect place for me to repeat my Norwegian experience,” he said.

“I wanted to be away from Toronto and get away from the city influence and start freshly in the country. I wanted to go to a place that has nothing, so that I can build everything.”

He certainly wasn’t shy about expressing his thoughts on Tottenham’s current art community – or lackthereof.

“I’m afraid I’m a little bit standoffish and snobbish at times, but I consider most of the work that is done here a little bit better than amateur.”

Dr. Gavigan hopes to get aspiring artists involved and on the right track and is confident he will be successful.

“I think so, because I’ve done that three times in my life already,” he said. “The first time was in England when I finished studying in education in London, I went to Manchester to teach at an art academy there, which had been famous once and went down the drain, so I did the job of getting that back on its feet and then I came to Toronto in 1968 and ran right into Humber College, then to Norway and now I’m going to try it again.”

As an artist Dr. Gavigan describes himself as figurative and classical, as well as abstract. He also loves to sketch freely.

At his studio on 54 Queen Street, you can find Dr. Gavigan and an awe-inspiring collection of Canadian influenced water colours and drawings.

“Anything inspires me as long as I can see some life potential in it,” he explained. “As an artist I’m more concerned about interpreting and showing my reaction to places and objects.

“For example, I’ve got a water colour painting of a wolf, which I photographed from a very great distance, it dropped its shoulders down and sort of checked me out and it was like he shook his head like I wasn’t even worth attacking and he just walked away in disgust. You get a feeling of the expression on the wolf and his actions.”

Showing others how to create and display that type of expression is what he hopes to teach students at his art school.

Come September, Dr. Gavigan will be offering a variety of intense classes out of his Tottenham location.

Classes will include watercolour painting, portrait painting, oil painting, life drawing and painting and performance.

For Dr. Gavigan, the growth and presence of local art is essential to a community and its his goal to foster that in Tottenham.

“Local art is critical I think, because it develops creative awareness in the population and with creative awareness, you make better cars and cook better burgers, it just gets people up there working. There’s not a thing that you can go and buy that hasn’t been touched by an artist,” he said.

“People think that artists are sloppy people who do drugs and lay around all day and splash something unintelligible on a canvas, well that’s not true. Artists are industrious people.

“I’m quoting the president of the Bank of Montreal in 1969 who gave a speech at Humber College where he said that, ‘we wouldn’t have money if there were no artists in the world.’”

When all is said and done, Dr. Gavigan is excited to bring his art and skill to the area and feels that things are beginning to work out nicely.

“It’s one of those happenstance things and you land in the right place.”

For more information, contact Dr. Gavigan by email at keith@asad.no or stop by his studio at 54 Queen Street.

By Jeff Doner

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