Exhibition Info
RURAL LIFE
It is common practice in the twenty-first century to capture one’s day-to-day life with a smart phone. Individuals document everything from their bike rides to work to what they made for dinner, taking numerous pictures a day. Go back one hundred years to 1915, when cameras were uncommon and life was documented through paintings. The individuals whose paintings captured the pioneers’ day-to-day lives were pioneers themselves, with honest, unpretentious approaches and pieces created for the enjoyment of ordinary folk.(1)
Irene McCaugherty is a multitalented artist whose forty-year career captured the rural life of European immigrants in the early twentieth century. She dedicates her book The Ladders We Climb, to her son, extended family, and the memory of her late husband David, noting that “his heroes were men of the frontier, who broke the sod of western Canada, the last breed who worked hard and played hard, men who wanted to die with their boots on.” Her dedication describes a time when cowboys, who travelled from afar with dreams of farming their own homesteads on lands barren of trees, presevered through harsh winters and hot summers in the rolling hills of Southern Alberta. But despite the many hardships the homesteaders endured, they enjoyed the simple things: the sunset after a long day’s work, homemade buns, singing and dancing to fiddles and of course, a successful harvest.
Rural Life features a selection of paintings from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts’ permanent collection that celebrate Irene McCaugherty’s artistic career. Having lived in Fort MacLeod for most of her life, McCaugherty documented the life of homesteaders during the Depression era. She explains, “From the lips of pioneers, I heard about the frontier. I saw the look in their eyes of adventure, survival, hard work, good times, and . . . loneliness.” Her works employ nostalgia for a simpler way of life, enhance the importance of capturing history though visual expression and display the admirable natural skill of a self-taught artist.
McCaugherty’s artistic career began with a typewriter. She began writing in 1949, gathering stories from pioneers, and was eventually published in the Lethbridge Harold in 1952. During this time, an artist friend encouraged her to express herself through drawing. Four years later she was making a living reporting the social news of the district while exploring visual expression through oil painting. A turning point in McCaugherty’s career came when a local business commissioned her to create paintings that captured the region’s history. From her experiences as a reporter, McCaugherty created three-by-eight-foot paintings illustrating the lives of local pioneers. (Her signature format was based on looking at the landscape through the windshield of a truck.) Through this commission, she transitioned from documenting early twentieth-century rural life through writing to doing so through painting. She continued to take photos and write poetry for the rest of her life, but her unique style and personal aesthetic as an artist make her one of the most well-known Canadian folk artists of the twentieth century.
Rural Life was curated by Xanthe Isbister, Manager/Curator, Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre, Region 4 of the AFA Travelling Exhibition Program (TREX).
1. Harper, J. Russell. A People’s Art. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974).
