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Paul
Grignon - BIO
I
was born in 1948, in Toronto, a place where I never actually felt at
home, perhaps because all the wooded areas I loved as a kid were disappearing
so rapidly. My teenage years were spent in Ottawa, before it became
a real city.
When
people ask me when I started painting I answer... we all started painting,
I just never stopped. But I started painting quite realistically in
oils when I was thirteen.
| “I
remember I was four years old on the swing in my backyard when
I suddenly became awake to myself and my surroundings , all bathed
in a pure light.” |
To
the question did you go to Art School or are you self taught, the answer
is both. After I dropped out of Applied Chemistry at Waterloo, I did
one year at the New School of Art in downtown Toronto. But I skipped
most of the classes in order to do life drawing all day. I also enjoyed
abstract expressionist painting. I credit that year with teaching me
how to be an artist, more than technically how to paint.
detail
from first oil painting age 13
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However a year later I signed up for a course in television production,
thinking the employment possibilities would be better. The school promptly
collapsed, became an amateur theatre group and got a grant to transform
a big bankrupt church into a wonderful theatre.
Renovations in the daytime, theatre at night. I had a hand in everything
and learned a lot, but not about television production!
Gabriella
1974 |
I soon caught the Mother Earth News bug, started doing yoga at 4 am
with people in white turbans, chanting with Krishnaites and then suddenly
got the urge to go West.
After a glorious summer of hiking in the Rockies I arrived with friends
on Gabriola in September of 1973. One of those friends was Tsiporah,
and we soon became partners.
Treeplanting, housebuilding, having children at home, the “hippy
days” on Gabriola still bring warm memories and feelings of kinship
and community among all who shared them.
1982
Museum Diorama (detail) |
Many
moved on but, except for seven months at a vegan community in Oregon
we have been here ever since, deeply involved in the growth
of the community.
People often comment “I’ll bet you’ve seen a lot of
changes in that time” I answer, “Yes but the rate of change
has been much slower than any other place I’ve lived.”
This
island is so beautiful it is a privilege to live here and a duty not
to spoil it. So far most Gabriolans seem to understand that. Which is
why I’m still happy to call this place home.
“The
universe is inherently beautiful, and a sense of beauty is itself
a gift from its Creator. Painting is my form of worship, therapy
and at-one-ment in this age of manmade destruction.
Planetary scale fascinates me most which is why I am drawn to
shorescapes where sky, land, ocean, space and light dance with
each other.”
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