lives livedArts educator Eric Newton Atkinson painted summary landscapes into his 90sJanuary 23, 2023

Eric Newton Atkinson: Artist. Educator. Communicator. Bon vivant. Born July 23, 1928, in Hartlepool, County Durham, England; died July 14, 2022, in London, Ont., from issues of a stroke; aged 93.

Water was all the time Eric Newton Atkinson’s muse. He was the great-grandson of a harbourmaster of Hartlepool, England, and preferred to say he was additionally half Viking. His most superb work function Hartlepool’s docks and cranes and the Tower Bridge in London – or plumb the depths of the Nice Lakes. He painted vigorous summary landscapes into his 90s and attacked the canvas on the ground of his basement studio from 4 sides.

Often known as Ricky to his associates, he met Muriel Ross on the West Hartlepool School of Artwork the place he studied portray and she or he turned an knowledgeable in cloth arts. Muriel remembers their courtship included many letters and telephone calls which, within the lean postwar years, have been positioned to a telephone field exterior her dwelling in Edinburgh at a prearranged time. He served within the British Military beginning in 1948 and, after serving abroad, obtained an ex-forces grant to review artwork on the prestigious Royal Academy Colleges in London.

In 1956, Eric started educating at Leeds School of Artwork in a program impressed by the collaborative teachings of the Bauhaus in Berlin, and revered for graduates similar to Henry Moore and Dame Barbara Hepworth. Eric and Muriel’s two youngsters, Brigit and Sean, have been born in Leeds.

Due to Leeds’s fame for excellence, a gaggle of arts educators lured him to London, Ont., in 1969 to turn into each chair of the High quality Arts Division and dean of the College of Utilized Arts and Know-how at Fanshawe School.

Muriel describes Eric as each mild and enthusiastic about all of the issues he beloved. And this vitality was introduced on backwoods summer time tenting journeys in Canada and Maine.

“All household journeys have been about portray and training. My father all the time stopped to learn the historical past indicators,” Sean recalled.

Brigit remembers rolling as much as the door of a Manhattan lodge en path to a present on the Guggenheim after their tent had been sprayed by a skunk. Their baggage carried an aroma that she referred to as “woodsy.” However Ricky was unfazed considering solely concerning the enjoyable they have been about to have artwork and seeing Jesus Christ Celebrity on Broadway.

At Fanshawe, Atkinson recruited expertise from the UK and throughout, and grew a spread of utilized arts applications, together with filmmaking, Music Business Arts, Culinary Arts and Panorama Design. Terry Graff, an artwork curator in New Brunswick, got here to Fanshawe in 1972 after a private tour with Ricky that included an insightful critique of a carload of his paintings. “He beloved the “nowness of now” – the fibreglass kinds and digital music and environmental artwork and being up to date and related to what was happening in all the humanities.”

However his worldwide method was not everybody’s cup of tea. Atkinson made waves in London’s vibrant, typically clannish artwork scene. Westland Gallery proprietor Al Stewart remembered it was not easy crusing. “He had a tricky go. However he got here with a function to deliver folks in from far and wide within the arts. He was additionally a talented educator. Actually, he might have been a famous person as an artist however he additionally selected to teach and share his data.”

In the end, the town got here to understand his imaginative and prescient. “He didn’t have a giant ego. He was motivated by concepts,” Sean mentioned.

“Ricky wished college students to find their very own assets and be impartial thinkers,” Muriel mentioned. “He believed there was nobody proper manner and didn’t need college students to study by rote, however to make issues.”

Mary Ann Colihan is Ricky’s good friend.

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