November Pickings by Rody Kenny Courtice

Born in Renfrew, Ontario, she studied at the Ontario College of Art (1920-1924) under Arthur, Lismer and others and won scholarship each year until graduation. She attended the Art Institute of Chicago where she studied puppets and stagecraft under Tony Sarges and also took observation classes in schools at New York, London, Paris, and elsewhere. She studied stagecraft under Roy Mitchell. She was Librarian at the Ontario College of Art 1925-6; Assistant Instructor to Arthur Lismer for Children’s Classes for ten years; Assistant Instructor to J. W. Beatty at Port Hope Summer School; taught at the Doon School of Art and Teachers’ Summer Course with the late Professor John Alford.

As a painter she was influenced mainly by the Group of Seven and the late Hans Hofmann, having attended a summer session under tom at Provincetown, Mass. in 1950. She was a painter of landscapes and abstracts in the media of egg tempera, watercolour, oils, charcoal, crayon, college and scratchboard. She exhibited at the Tate Gallery, London, England; New York at the World’s Fair, 1939; and American-British Gallery, New York.

She had a continued interest in farm subjects which she presented in several styles. A review of her 1951 exhibition at the Victoria College by the Globe and Mail stated “Beginning with the work fairly typical of the post-Group-of-Seven era, she has gone on to representational work integrated with abstract backgrounds and then to more stress on the abstract side . . . our preference is for the . . . “July Siesta” (a study of cats and dandelions in hot, midsummer laziness) or “Cows” (a study of these animals in a formal design). She is never merely funny, which would be trivial, but she has the rare gift of feeling the intrinsic humour of the world.”

She was a member of the Canadian Group of Painters; Associate Royal Canadian Academy; Ontario Society of Artists; Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour (former Vice-Pres.); Canadian Society of Graphic Art; Heliconian Club (former Pres.); Federation of Canadian Artists (former Pres. Ontario Region). She lived in Toronto.

Source: "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume I: A-F", compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1977