Ritchie’s, auction, Toronto, 30 November 1994, lot 164
Private Collection, Toronto
Exhibited
“Home Truths”, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, 1998
Literature
Joan Murray, “Home Truths”, Toronto, 1997, reproduced page 139
Joan Murray regards the hearth as one of the icons of the home in her book “Home Truths”, and writes of this work, "Even today when fireplaces are no longer a functional necessity, the hearth is a powerful symbol of familial love....".
Challener's passion for the natural world carries this work. Amid his pyrotechnics of paint, the viewer should not miss his special genius for colour. He responded to the reduced size of the work by cropping the image, creating a strongly compressed, nearly abstract composition. The result has a meditative, immersive quality; the hearth is really a world unto itself.
