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| Many catalogues
and books about Christopher Pratt’s work have been published in
the last 20 years, including Personal Reflections on a Life in Art,
(1995) which brings his writing and visual art together. Key Porter Books/
Prentice Hall Canada published the first of these books, titled, Christopher
Pratt in 1982. Written by David P. Silcox and Meriké Weiler,
this book provided readers with a new insight into Pratt's life and work
in rural Newfoundland. In 1985 the Vancouver Art Gallery, organized a
major retrospective of Pratt's work. A catalogue titled Christopher
Pratt: A Retrospective, with essays by Joyce Zemans, accompanied the
exhibition. This exhibition, which offered Pratt an opportunity to view
his work at mid-career, led him in new directions; in particular, Pratt
decided that he wanted, and needed, to work on bigger paintings. |
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1982 |
Christopher
Pratt has exhibited extensively outside Canada since the mid 1970s. The
Mira Godard Gallery, in association with the Marlborough Gallery, exhibited
his work in New York in 1976. In 1982, Mira Godard Gallery and the Canada
House Cultural Centre Gallery in London, England, organized a show of
Pratt's paintings, prints and drawings; the show toured Paris, Brussels
and Dublin. A collection of Pratt's silkscreen prints, created between
1960 and 1982, traveled to Rome, Glasgow, Berkshire, Dublin and Vienna
(1983 - 1985) and, in 1986, several of Pratt's prints were featured by
the American Associated Artists Gallery in New York. Two years later,
a number of Pratt's paintings were exhibited at the 49th Parallel Gallery
in New York. |
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Until 1990 Pratt worked in a studio which was connected to the main living
area of the house in Salmonier. Although he had created some of his most
important work in that space, he always felt he needed a place separate
and apart from the family home. In 1990 he built a new
studio on the crest of a hill overlooking the Salmonier River Valley.
The building was designed to his particular needs with the help of his
brother, architect Philip Pratt (PHB Group). In January 1992, only sixteen
months after he moved to the new studio, a freak accident started a fire
that destroyed the new studio, and forced Pratt to return to his original
studio space. Built on the flood
plain of the Salmonier River, the house and studio had often come
close to disaster as the river swelled behind ice jams in the spring.
As fortune would have it, in the spring of 1993, only one year after fire
gutted the new studio, the Salmonier River overflowed its banks and poured
into the house and old studio. While the water did not create the same
level of destruction as the fire, it did ruin much work in progress.
These events had an effect on Pratt's work for several years later. Paintings such as A Room at St. Vincent's (1992); Basement with Two Beds (1993); Moose and Transports (1993) and Big Cigarette (1993) have about them an air of foreboding new to his work. During the same period he completed many studies of a variety of subjects in mixed media, which have influenced his work in recent years. This work has been less dependant upon memories and more responsive to things he finds and chooses to celebrate from day to day. In 1998, a time of introspection on the 1992 studio fire led to several narrative collages. A second book, The Prints of Christopher Pratt, published in 1991 by Breakwater Books with the Mira Godard Gallery featured his prints from 1958 to 1991 and served as a lead-in to a major print retrospective at the Mira Godard Gallery in Toronto. The show later traveled to Washington, DC and major galleries across Canada. Personal Reflections on a Life in Art, published in 1995 by Key Porter Books, brought the reader into close contact with the artist through his own writing. Pratt revisited the west coast of the province many times in the late 1990s and produced several lithograph prints at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook. In November of 1999 the Mira Godard Gallery organized a 30th Anniversary Exhibition of Pratt's work in recognition of their longstanding association. In the summer of 2000, he rebuilt his studio in its original location. Christopher Pratt still lives and works in St. Catherine's, St. Mary's Bay. The past several years have been among his most productive. The works of art he has created there over a span of 40 years, and new works every year, can be seen in public and private art galleries across the country. Along with several books that have been written about Christopher Pratt's life and work, a substantial bibliography attests to the strength of his work for almost four decades. Pratt's love of sailing, another source of inspiration for his art, was sparked in 1961 with the purchase of a 34' trap skiff which he modified and renamed Walrus, and continues to this day with a 37' C&C Sloop named Dora Maar. Christopher Pratt's deep connection to his province and his home is clearly his most profound inspiration. His unique ability to define and express the emotional nature of that inspiration through his work, speaks to all who enjoy his work. It is this capacity to connect with people through art that ensures him a place in the collective consciousness and in the hearts of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and beyond.
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