Looking Through Time

In 1975, George Glenn rode the bus from Regina to Prince Albert. Fresh from his graduate studies in Cincinnati and a year in France, he was about to embark on an artist residency in north-central Saskatchewan. The residency was supported by the Saskatchewan Arts Board (now SK Arts) and was to be one year in length. After a warm welcome to Prince Albert by Margreet van Walsem, George grew to become a formative presence in the fine arts community. His one-year residency has stretched to five decades. In this time he has developed a distinct visual language, steeped in a contemplation of meaning created by the relationships between the objects, landscapes, and spaces in his life.

This exhibition brings together paintings, drawings, and installation pieces that George has created in the past 50 years. It shows not only the development in his thinking, but what has persisted in his practice: his inner sensitivity to beauty, space for the unseen, the nuanced conditions that affect ways of seeing, and the link between personal and global narratives. These considerations occur within the realm of experimentation, reflection, and observation in George’s studio. 

Although he has spent most of his life in the prairie provinces, George’s practice has remained independent from dominant traditions in these regions, such as formalism and high abstraction. Rather, his works are rooted in familiar representational imagery, drawn from both his personal memories and experiences, that encourage narrative and identifiable references. In Looking Through Time, the bits of memories from 50+ years that have forged a presence in George’s mind are expanded, arranged in the gallery to generate a new space of thinking.

Curated by Jesse Campbell with support from SK Arts.