Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto/Calgary
Private Collection, New Brunswick
Literature
David Silcox and Meriké Weiler, Christopher Pratt, Toronto, 1982, pages 20-21, 126, 130, and 184-85
Figural work is an integral component in Pratt's body of work. Often employing family friends as models, many of the artist's figure drawings, begun first as rough sketches, were later refined into Pratt's signature simplified visual style. A model Pratt often returned to in larger paintings, Donna was a friend of Christopher and Mary Pratt. The artist explained that “[Donna] came from my own world” referring to his practice of weaving his own fantasy, construction and ideas of form, figure and final composition.
On these figural drawings, Christopher Pratt explains, “I feel professionally shortchanged when I can't paint figures...There are always two figures in my figure paintings - the girl and me...I have to be alone, completely by myself, before I can start work. I often work on figures after the model has left the room, so that the work can liberate itself from her - she is herself, this is mine.”
