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An Alberta Road Trip with RFM McInnis

Join us as we take a road trip across Alberta. 

So many people enjoy road trips with family, friends or on their own every day. Road trips are enjoyable because they offer freedom, adventure, and an escape from daily routines through spontaneity. They transform the journey itself into an experience, allowing for deeper bonding with travel companions, unique sightseeing and a sense of calm from observing new landscapes, wildlife and culture. 

The works in An Alberta Road Trip with RFM McInnis were carefully selected from over one hundred of McInnis’s works in the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Permanent Collection. McInnis has lived and painted in many regions of the country and has a special affection for the Southern Alberta prairie with its tonal ochres. In this show you will be taken on a journey from Peace River in the Province’s Northwest all the way down to Milk River in the South. 

As you travel through the show, enjoy the gestural brushstrokes of McInnis’s paintings that showcase the wide-open prairies we all know, alongside the whimsical painting from his series, A is for Alberta. In these works, we learn about different destinations in Alberta. For example, there is a small town Southeast of Calgary called Vulcan: in 1990 Vulcan embraced the coincidence of sharing its name with Mr. Spock’s home planet, branding itself as the ‘Official Star Trek Capital of Canada’ to boost tourism.

Curated by Jamie-Lee Cormier,  Curator/Manager of Travelling Exhibitions Northwest  

 

Featured Image : RFM McInnis, Y is for Yellowhead, 2022, Oil on linen, Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts

 

Featured Artists

Robert McInnis has lived and painted in many regions of the country and has a special affection for the southern Alberta prairie with its tonal ochres. During his lifetime McInnis has also painted the figure in watercolour and oil. At heart, McInnis considers himself a figurative artist in the Maritime tradition of Fred Ross, Millar Brittain, Jack Humphrey, Alex Colville and Christopher Pratt. In addition, as a photographer, the artist has shown a keen appreciation for historical sites, railways and prairie grain elevators.    McInnis has a Diploma in Fine and Applied Arts (1961) from Saint John Vocational School (NB). Noted teachers included Fred Ross and D. Edwin Campbell. From 1961-1971, McInnis served as the head of the Prince George College Art Department before returning to Toronto to begin his “real art career”. Since then, the artist has worked independently with what he once described as a systematic plan to make himself known nationally by “living regionally” as a bold and brushy landscape artist. In doing so, McInnis has had the opportunity to interpret the rural environments of Alberta and eastern Canada especially the picturesque Charlevois region of Quebec. A prolific artist, McInnis’ ouevre also includes a series of railway paintings and more familiarly a large body of work devoted to the female subject. Begun in Toronto in the 1970s, his Women in Interiors series is an example of what the artist termed Expressive Realism where his best results convey feeling rather than just being descriptive. Public collections containing his work include Hart House (U of T, Toronto, ON), the Glenbow Museum & Nickle Galleries (Calgary, AB), Library and Archives Canada (Ottawa, ON), the New Brunswick Museum (Saint John, NB) and the Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton, AB).
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Exhibition Guide

Funded by

TREX NW Program Sponsor