Tribute to Ken Danby

On February 28, 2008 Jerry Markham wrote:

Well, I have been studying to be an artist now for almost ten years and yet I feel I now know less then I ever have. Socrates says for a wise man this is true, however, it feels this is hard to accept.

I wanted to be a painter to depict things in my childhood I loved. I enjoyed nature and animals but mostly it was sports. I played many sports - baseball, football, but I always loved hockey the most. Even though it was never my best sport, I played for 11 years and enjoyed it and miss it sometimes still.

I remember as a boy looking at pictures of hockey and trying to draw them, often with little success but having the encouragement of my parents to try again. Later in my youth, I remember seeing the art of Ken Danby, not knowing then who he was. This changed everything for me. 

Knowing in my early teens that I would never be a great sports star, I started thinking of other things that might be feasible for a career. I thought of art. Others thought different but I knew of nothing else that might fit me. Still as a young man, Ken Danby paintings were what I saw and stirred me and I did not know why. Ten years later, and much debate and talk of what art is, I am back to my original thoughts.

Ken Danby was a great painter, he knew some things about composition, paint application and story telling that I can only hope to ever attain. He was a great Canadian and had a cause for painting. I remember telling one of my first teachers after art school, a forever ending experience of one semester at ACAD, "I am here to learn how to paint like Ken Danby". He chuckled. I did not know why.

After many art classes I learned what so called "real painters" thought of Ken Danby, Robert Bateman and others of their kind, realist painters. This continued for many years until I had the chance to see Robert Bateman's retrospective show. I then realized that everything I had been taught for the most part was untrue. Not the application of paint, but the theory of what art is. Art is big and wide. But art is a craft and it is to be well done. Great art is hard, and it is supposed to be hard.

I am almost ten years in and I am now only beginning to understand what I want to say and how to say it. This painting of a goalie is a tribute to the late great Ken Danby. A painter and a man who was taken too early and with more to say no doubt. I am sorry I never had the chance to meet him and thank him for inspiring me to be a painter. I hope I can say half as much and reach half as many as he did. He was a great Canadian painter and has my respect.

"The Guardian" - 20x30 inches - Oil - by Jerry Markham

 

 

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