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THE LANDSCAPE ART OF TONI ONLEY
by Robert H. Jones
Canadian landscape painter Toni Onley is a flamboyant individual
who drives a Rolls Royce and flies his own airplanes. He is also
a compassionate humanitarian who quietly devotes time, effort and money to Canada India Village Aid (CIVA), of which he is
vice-chairman.
In 1983, Onley created a national furor by taking on Revenue
Canada. Faced with having 1,058 prints assessed for tax purposes
as if he were a manufacturer with unsold inventory, he threatened to burn them on Vancouver's Wreck Beach. Politicians and cabinet ministers became involved, and the Canadian Conference on the Arts asked then Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau to intervene. A moratorium on the taxation of artists was declared in time to stop what would have been a $1 million bonfire.
A year later, he was again in the national news. During a
painting trip with photographer John Reeves, Onley crashed while
attempting to take off from Cheakamus Glacier, 120 km north of
Vancouver. Reeves was knocked unconscious and Onley suffered a
broken leg. The two spent a cold, terrifying 17 hours huddled in
the wrecked airplane, which dangled over a deep crevasse,
precariously supported by its wings.
Shortly after being rescued, Onley quipped from his hospital bed. "Toni's not going up there again for a long time. Anyone who wants a glacier painting had better get one now."
Onley is best appreciated in person. Warm, witty, articulate,
self-assured and opinionated, he laughs easily and his eyes
twinkle with mirth as he tells self-depreciating tales.
Recently, as we sat in his studio, I asked him to relate his
early days.
"As a child growing up on the Isle of Man, I never had an
identity crisis -- I always knew I was an artist. In grade one,
the teacher asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" One girl was going to be a nun, one boy wanted to drive a train -- the usual childhood ambitions. I said, 'I'm going to be an
artist.' Everybody laughed and the teacher said, 'Toni, why don't you be practical?'
"My Dad, God bless him, was an actor. He didn't want another
artist in the family -- you know, cutting off my ear and living
off the family after I was 40, so he put me into architecture.
British architects also train in land surveying, which was a
blessing. In 1948, when our family arrived in Ontario, I couldn't find work in architecture, so I worked as a surveyor. I did very little painting at that time as I'd arrive home exhausted after working all day."
Onley married Mary Burrows in 1949. He was 20, she 18. A
daughter, Jennifer, was born the following year, followed by Lynn in 1952. "I was trying to bring up a family, so there wasn't much time paint. But I did manage two summers at the Doon School of Fine Art, near Kitchener.
In 1955, Mary died suddenly of a freak thymus disorder. The
tragedy devastated Onley. "Mom and Dad were living at Penticton.
Their repertory company had gone broke there, so they stayed.
They phoned and said 'Pack the kids on a plane and come out here
and we'll sort it out. It was the best thing I ever did.
"I worked as an architect, designing schools -- about 24 of them
throughout the Interior of British Columbia. But, after a year I
got terribly depressed, because I wanted to be a painter.
"I applied for a scholarship at The Instituto Allende in San
Miguel de Allende, Mexico. I got a tuition scholarship, which was all the excuse I needed to go. I needed money, so I hired a local auctioneer and sold all of my paintings -- about 250 water
colours. I averaged about $5 a painting, but that $1,300 provided enough money for us to live in Mexico for a year."
Onley found the school inadequate, but life in San Miguel was
stimulating -- and economical. He experimented with new painting
styles, but his attempts dissatisfied him. In a rage, he tore up
the paintings. "A whole new vocabulary of shapes began to emerge
as the pieces fell to the floor."
From frustration and destruction, he discovered and developed an
intense interest in abstract collages. "After a year I ran out of money, so I headed for Vancouver. I'd done quite a few collages, which I brought with me. I found a gallery to handle my work, then lucked into a show at the Vancouver Art Gallery when another show was cancelled. My work started to sell -- my first bonafide sales -- to people I didn't know! When you sell to someone who's
not a relative, you're on your way.
"I went back to Mexico for another two years. My Vancouver dealer sent me at least a couple of hundred dollars a month, which made me the richest man in town -- I could stand drinks for everybody.
"American painting of that period was by two attitudes of mind.
One was the blind intuitive action painting. After you had
thrashed around for a while, you sat back with a conscious mind
and made decisions about what you had done. If a painting became
too complicated to preconceive, it narrowed you to a point where
you couldn't move. If a happy accident happened, you couldn't
respond to it, because that wasn't the original idea. You had to
go with it. Even today, I never draw before I paint -- I want the painting to carry me in any direction that it might."
After returned to Vancouver in 1960, Onley set up a home and
studio. He married again in 1961, and that same year was awarded
a Junior Canada Council grant. Two years later he received a
Senior Canada Fellowship, after which he returned to England to
study and work.
Tragedy again marred his life in 1964. While the Onleys were
sailing home to Canada, his daughter Jennifer was killed in a car accident while en route to meet their ship.
In 1966, a son, James, was born. That was the same year Onley
took flying lessons. One year later, he bought a used Champion
Skytrack. With it, he flew to remote beaches, there to paint the
West Coast landscapes for which he is best known. An amphibious
Lake Buccaneer was later purchased so he could fly into mountain
lakes. This was followed by the ski-equipped Wilga 80, which
nearly became his coffin.
Asked if he foresaw future change in his style, Onley replied, "I never predict changes. Change happens in the work -- it's the
nature of the way I work. One painting leads to another. I may
not realize something completely in one painting, but it provides the germ of an idea which I can better solve in another painting. That's how change takes place -- from painting to painting.
"Water colours I did 10 years ago were considerably more assembled that those I do today. Much more abstract, more concerned with large flat shapes and establishing spaces in the paintings, much more direct. Today's work is probably becoming more realistic. You can identify the subject more readily today than you could have 10 years ago when I did what might be called archetypal landscapes -- they could be almost anywhere. Today I do more particular types of landscapes.
"I hanker to get back to a simpler type of painting, to throw
things out that are superfluous. I try to say as much as I can
with as little as I can. It's like poetry: say a lot with a
little. I don't sit down and paint Garibaldi Mountain. There's
too much information there to paint every leaf, every tree, every crevice -- it becomes too much. I take three or four minute details out of the landscape -- a cloud, a section of the
mountain, a rock, a reflection on the water, something happening
in the foreground -- then I move them around so they all make
sense in relation to each other."
When I mentioned the subject of wildlife art versus fine art,
Onley said, "We can't confuse nature with art. City council would never approve a great monument in our harbor, for example. They would say 'Why would we want a great, free-standing sculpture in our harbor when we have these mountains.' The mountains aren't ours; what man makes is ours -- like the Acropolis is ours. It enhances nature and nature enhances it. They work in tandem with each other.
"These confusions will never really be resolved because they are
set positions that people take as to what is art and what is
nature. The Bateman camp is totally involved with being
absolutely faithful to nature. Their intent is: I'm going to
paint a particular bird in a particular position doing a
particular thing at a particular time of day. It's all
preconceived and planned out. It becomes very hard work and
there's no room for surprises. It's like digging trenches - hard
physical work that crosses your eyes. But it gives a lot of
pleasure to people who identify with animals and birds, so that's fine.
"For me, the great joy of painting is the surprise. When I start painting in the morning, I have no idea what it is going to look like when I finally put my brush down. It may be the best thing I've ever done in my life, or it might be the worst. God only knows.
"Water colour is my favourite medium and I use Oriental brushes.
When you flop down a goat hair brush. it stays bent. As you paint and flop it around, you're making sort of controlled mistakes. You're on the edge of disaster all the time, but at the same time on the edge of possibility.
"The best water colours are the ones that fall off the brush. It's what the Chinese call 'The Song of the Brush.' It just happens. It has little to do with the ability to paint, but it has everything to do with the ability to recognize something when it happens.
"When I was doing abstract collages, if someone had told me, 'One of these days you're going to be back out in the country, drying water colours over a fire like you used to do when you were a kid,' I would have said, 'You're out of your mind.'
"I don't know of any other Canadian painters who sit out there on a bald rock and paints like I do. In the 19th century, that was the way people painted: they sat right out there with their
easels. Even Van Gogh sat in a cornfield to paint. Now, they do
it mostly in the studio. They go out and do some rough sketches
or take a lot of photographs, then they beetle back to the studio and compose something out of that. I look at myself as being either the last of a tradition or the first of a new breed. I have no idea.
"The Group of Seven went out and did sketches on birch panels,
right on the spot. I think they are the best things they ever
did. But when Tom Thompson went back to his studio and did those
huge things like 'Jack Pine,' they died in the studio. They are
just big blow-ups and they've lost all their life, that immediate contact with nature."
My last question to Onley was to ask what lies in the future.
"Everybody is very curious about the Arctic, so I think a book
about it would sell very well, particularly one written by an
artist. I've collected diaries over three years, so that's my
next big project. I see it as a very nice coffee table book,
top-heavy with photographs and reproductions of paintings. What
do you think?"
What did I think? I promptly placed an order. It will be worth
the wait.
-- Art Impressions
Canadian landscape painter Toni Onley is a flamboyant individual
who drives a Rolls Royce and flies his own airplanes. He is also
a compassionate humanitarian who quietly devotes time, effort and money to Canada India Village Aid (CIVA), of which he is
vice-chairman.
In 1983, Onley created a national furor by taking on Revenue
Canada. Faced with having 1,058 prints assessed for tax purposes
as if he were a manufacturer with unsold inventory, he threatened to burn them on Vancouver's Wreck Beach. Politicians and cabinet ministers became involved, and the Canadian Conference on the Arts asked then Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau to intervene. A moratorium on the taxation of artists was declared in time to stop what would have been a $1 million bonfire.
A year later, he was again in the national news. During a
painting trip with photographer John Reeves, Onley crashed while
attempting to take off from Cheakamus Glacier, 120 km north of
Vancouver. Reeves was knocked unconscious and Onley suffered a
broken leg. The two spent a cold, terrifying 17 hours huddled in
the wrecked airplane, which dangled over a deep crevasse,
precariously supported by its wings.
Shortly after being rescued, Onley quipped from his hospital bed. "Toni's not going up there again for a long time. Anyone who wants a glacier painting had better get one now."
Onley is best appreciated in person. Warm, witty, articulate,
self-assured and opinionated, he laughs easily and his eyes
twinkle with mirth as he tells self-depreciating tales.
Recently, as we sat in his studio, I asked him to relate his
early days.
"As a child growing up on the Isle of Man, I never had an
identity crisis -- I always knew I was an artist. In grade one,
the teacher asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" One girl was going to be a nun, one boy wanted to drive a train -- the usual childhood ambitions. I said, 'I'm going to be an
artist.' Everybody laughed and the teacher said, 'Toni, why don't you be practical?'
"My Dad, God bless him, was an actor. He didn't want another
artist in the family -- you know, cutting off my ear and living
off the family after I was 40, so he put me into architecture.
British architects also train in land surveying, which was a
blessing. In 1948, when our family arrived in Ontario, I couldn't find work in architecture, so I worked as a surveyor. I did very little painting at that time as I'd arrive home exhausted after working all day."
Onley married Mary Burrows in 1949. He was 20, she 18. A
daughter, Jennifer, was born the following year, followed by Lynn in 1952. "I was trying to bring up a family, so there wasn't much time paint. But I did manage two summers at the Doon School of Fine Art, near Kitchener.
In 1955, Mary died suddenly of a freak thymus disorder. The
tragedy devastated Onley. "Mom and Dad were living at Penticton.
Their repertory company had gone broke there, so they stayed.
They phoned and said 'Pack the kids on a plane and come out here
and we'll sort it out. It was the best thing I ever did.
"I worked as an architect, designing schools -- about 24 of them
throughout the Interior of British Columbia. But, after a year I
got terribly depressed, because I wanted to be a painter.
"I applied for a scholarship at The Instituto Allende in San
Miguel de Allende, Mexico. I got a tuition scholarship, which was all the excuse I needed to go. I needed money, so I hired a local auctioneer and sold all of my paintings -- about 250 water
colours. I averaged about $5 a painting, but that $1,300 provided enough money for us to live in Mexico for a year."
Onley found the school inadequate, but life in San Miguel was
stimulating -- and economical. He experimented with new painting
styles, but his attempts dissatisfied him. In a rage, he tore up
the paintings. "A whole new vocabulary of shapes began to emerge
as the pieces fell to the floor."
From frustration and destruction, he discovered and developed an
intense interest in abstract collages. "After a year I ran out of money, so I headed for Vancouver. I'd done quite a few collages, which I brought with me. I found a gallery to handle my work, then lucked into a show at the Vancouver Art Gallery when another show was cancelled. My work started to sell -- my first bonafide sales -- to people I didn't know! When you sell to someone who's
not a relative, you're on your way.
"I went back to Mexico for another two years. My Vancouver dealer sent me at least a couple of hundred dollars a month, which made me the richest man in town -- I could stand drinks for everybody.
"American painting of that period was by two attitudes of mind.
One was the blind intuitive action painting. After you had
thrashed around for a while, you sat back with a conscious mind
and made decisions about what you had done. If a painting became
too complicated to preconceive, it narrowed you to a point where
you couldn't move. If a happy accident happened, you couldn't
respond to it, because that wasn't the original idea. You had to
go with it. Even today, I never draw before I paint -- I want the painting to carry me in any direction that it might."
After returned to Vancouver in 1960, Onley set up a home and
studio. He married again in 1961, and that same year was awarded
a Junior Canada Council grant. Two years later he received a
Senior Canada Fellowship, after which he returned to England to
study and work.
Tragedy again marred his life in 1964. While the Onleys were
sailing home to Canada, his daughter Jennifer was killed in a car accident while en route to meet their ship.
In 1966, a son, James, was born. That was the same year Onley
took flying lessons. One year later, he bought a used Champion
Skytrack. With it, he flew to remote beaches, there to paint the
West Coast landscapes for which he is best known. An amphibious
Lake Buccaneer was later purchased so he could fly into mountain
lakes. This was followed by the ski-equipped Wilga 80, which
nearly became his coffin.
Asked if he foresaw future change in his style, Onley replied, "I never predict changes. Change happens in the work -- it's the
nature of the way I work. One painting leads to another. I may
not realize something completely in one painting, but it provides the germ of an idea which I can better solve in another painting. That's how change takes place -- from painting to painting.
"Water colours I did 10 years ago were considerably more assembled that those I do today. Much more abstract, more concerned with large flat shapes and establishing spaces in the paintings, much more direct. Today's work is probably becoming more realistic. You can identify the subject more readily today than you could have 10 years ago when I did what might be called archetypal landscapes -- they could be almost anywhere. Today I do more particular types of landscapes.
"I hanker to get back to a simpler type of painting, to throw
things out that are superfluous. I try to say as much as I can
with as little as I can. It's like poetry: say a lot with a
little. I don't sit down and paint Garibaldi Mountain. There's
too much information there to paint every leaf, every tree, every crevice -- it becomes too much. I take three or four minute details out of the landscape -- a cloud, a section of the
mountain, a rock, a reflection on the water, something happening
in the foreground -- then I move them around so they all make
sense in relation to each other."
When I mentioned the subject of wildlife art versus fine art,
Onley said, "We can't confuse nature with art. City council would never approve a great monument in our harbor, for example. They would say 'Why would we want a great, free-standing sculpture in our harbor when we have these mountains.' The mountains aren't ours; what man makes is ours -- like the Acropolis is ours. It enhances nature and nature enhances it. They work in tandem with each other.
"These confusions will never really be resolved because they are
set positions that people take as to what is art and what is
nature. The Bateman camp is totally involved with being
absolutely faithful to nature. Their intent is: I'm going to
paint a particular bird in a particular position doing a
particular thing at a particular time of day. It's all
preconceived and planned out. It becomes very hard work and
there's no room for surprises. It's like digging trenches - hard
physical work that crosses your eyes. But it gives a lot of
pleasure to people who identify with animals and birds, so that's fine.
"For me, the great joy of painting is the surprise. When I start painting in the morning, I have no idea what it is going to look like when I finally put my brush down. It may be the best thing I've ever done in my life, or it might be the worst. God only knows.
"Water colour is my favourite medium and I use Oriental brushes.
When you flop down a goat hair brush. it stays bent. As you paint and flop it around, you're making sort of controlled mistakes. You're on the edge of disaster all the time, but at the same time on the edge of possibility.
"The best water colours are the ones that fall off the brush. It's what the Chinese call 'The Song of the Brush.' It just happens. It has little to do with the ability to paint, but it has everything to do with the ability to recognize something when it happens.
"When I was doing abstract collages, if someone had told me, 'One of these days you're going to be back out in the country, drying water colours over a fire like you used to do when you were a kid,' I would have said, 'You're out of your mind.'
"I don't know of any other Canadian painters who sit out there on a bald rock and paints like I do. In the 19th century, that was the way people painted: they sat right out there with their
easels. Even Van Gogh sat in a cornfield to paint. Now, they do
it mostly in the studio. They go out and do some rough sketches
or take a lot of photographs, then they beetle back to the studio and compose something out of that. I look at myself as being either the last of a tradition or the first of a new breed. I have no idea.
"The Group of Seven went out and did sketches on birch panels,
right on the spot. I think they are the best things they ever
did. But when Tom Thompson went back to his studio and did those
huge things like 'Jack Pine,' they died in the studio. They are
just big blow-ups and they've lost all their life, that immediate contact with nature."
My last question to Onley was to ask what lies in the future.
"Everybody is very curious about the Arctic, so I think a book
about it would sell very well, particularly one written by an
artist. I've collected diaries over three years, so that's my
next big project. I see it as a very nice coffee table book,
top-heavy with photographs and reproductions of paintings. What
do you think?"
What did I think? I promptly placed an order. It will be worth
the wait.
-- Art Impressions
Submitted on February 1, 2005 in By David.
