Ontario College of Art Portfolio by Aleen Elizabeth Aked

Aleen Aked was born in 1907 in Kildwick, Yorkshire, England and moved to Ontario at age three. At fourteen she won an Arthur Lismer Junior Course Scholarship at the Ontario College of Art and later a fulltime scholarship. She studied under the Group of Seven members Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. MacDonald, F. W. Varley, and A.Y. Jackson. She also studied under J.W. Beatty, George Reid, Fred Haines, Yvonne McKague Housser, Emmanuel Hahn, and Sydney March and at the OCA (her classmates included Doris McCarthy and Isabel McLaughlin). From 1929 until 1944 she spent Winters in Sarasota, Florida, and Summers in Ontario. She exhibited regularly in Florida and became a member of the Southern States Art League and the Sarasota Art Association (in 1942 she served as president of the SAA). She also studied at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota and privately under American painters Abbott Graves (still-lifes) and Robert Brackman (portraits). She exhibited regularly in Canada at the Canadian National Exhibition, the Royal Canadian Academy, and the Ontario Society of Artists. In 1989 a major retrospective of her work was held at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario. A painter of still-lifes, portraits and landscapes in the post-impressionist tradition the artist passed way in 2003.

Bibliography: McMann, Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Exhibitions and Members 1880-1979 [p. 6]; Oshawa, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, The Art of Aleen Aked, by Joan Murray. [exhibition catalogue]. Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, Artists in Canada A Union List of Artists [p. 5].