Born in Brampton, Ontario, Ronald Bloore moved to Saskatchewan and was appointed as the Director of the MacKenzie Art Gallery in 1958, where he mounted exhibitions that pushed institutional boundaries. A Member of the Order of Canada (1993) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2007), Bloore also made an enduring impact as an educator, teaching art and art history at York University and the University of Regina, and influencing generations of Canadian artists and thinkers.
Bloore is known for his monochromatic paintings and his association with the Regina Five. He attended the University of Toronto and the Institute of Fine Arts in New York City where he studied both art history and archaeology. Bloore then went on to earn a Master of Arts from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. After studying at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, he began teaching archeology courses there, and later at Washington University as well as the University of Toronto. Bloore’s background in and appreciation of cultural history was a fundamental influence throughout his entire artistic career. Bloore opposed modernist traditions valuing Western art above and was personally interested in global art and incorporated this into his oeuvre.
Bloore worked alongside his fellow members of Regina Five but differed in approach - preferring to complete works in a series and executed his paintings with deliberate brush strokes. He often worked using only one or two colors, which were sometimes built up into impasto formations. Bloore’s early paintings were mostly white and all-over abstractions. However, these abstract patterns morphed into circles, solar crosses, and wheels that could be read as images with symbolic meaning later in his career. Bloore used, at times, up to twenty-six varieties of white in his paintings. Created by adding shadows and values of creams and grays Bloore would add textures through impasto to further create highlights and shadows.
Returning back to Canada after spending a year traveling in Greece, Turkey, and Egypt, Bloore became interested in painting all-white images in a raised relief. As illustrated in “Painting No. 1” (1964), Bloore was preoccupied with forming white symmetrical patterns comprised of white squares and rectangles, possibly mimicking Egyptian relief hieroglyphs and Roman decorative sarcophagus fronts. If not inspired by hieroglyphs or sarcophagi, Bloore’s work could have gained inspiration from American artist Alfred Jensen who painted colorful calligraphic paintings. Regardless, these white patterned paintings allowed Bloore to reflect on his experiences at Karnak, Luxor, and the Hagia Sophia. He was interested in the sacredness of the art which unites humankind through time and conveyed this through his abstract calligraphy and inclusion of symbols in his paintings.
Literature Source: Roald Nasgaard, "Abstract Painting in Canada", Vancouver, Douglas and McIntyre, 2008
We extend our thanks to Danie Klein, York University graduate student in art history, for writing and contributing this artist biography.
