Celebrating the life and work of Muriel Newton-White
TEMISKAMING SHORES - The Temiskaming Art Gallery is now showing a retrospective exhibition of the works of Muriel Newton-White.
The prolific artist and writer, who lived in the Charlton and Englehart area from 1928 to 2011, is known not only for her beautiful paintings and whimsical stories, but also for her popular book Backhouses of the North, which sold over 100,000 copies, and also for illustrating the important Wildflowers of the North, created by Ruby Gibbins Bryan.
The Temiskaming Art Gallery (TAG) has been in possession of the archive of Newton-White since her death, and three years ago, gallery executive director/curator Melissa La Porte and Felicity Buckell applied for a grant through the Museum Assistance Program through the Department of Canadian Heritage to create a travelling exhibition depicting the contributions of Newton-White to record the region's beauty and story through her lifetime.
The application was accepted and further funding was provided through Le Centre culturel ARTEM. The Englehart and Area Historical Museum, the Haileybury Heritage Museum, the Cobalt Historical Society, White Mountain Publishing and Laura's Art Shoppe also contributed to the project, along with members of her church group and the public who loaned artworks of Newton-White and shared their memories of her.
On May 26 the exhibition, titled Quiet Living, Close Looking: the life and world of an unsung artist of the North Muriel E. Newton-White, was officially opened to the public with about 100 people attending.
"She lived quietly but always had a sparkle, a twinkle in her eye," said Buckell, the curator of the exhibition.
ONTARIO COLLEGE OF ART
She related that Newton-White received her schooling through correspondence courses and had never been farther from home than New Liskeard as a child and through her early teens. But when she was 16 she won a scholarship to the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, now the Ontario College of Art and Design, and attended for four years, receiving training from Franklin Carmichael of the Group of Seven and other artists of that ilk.
She graduated in 1949 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
Buckell said she believed Newton-White drew every day of her life, starting from the age of three or four.
"She lived in a streetcar and she wouldn't have had any sketchbooks. She would have just been finding little pieces of paper around the house. She drew on her homework. She drew on her math assignments. This I know for sure because I saw them."
Within the archive of Newton-White there are pictures from her earliest years of her bunnies, birds and flowers that would later populate her many children's books.
"Even at the age of five, she was drawing a picture of a leaf and saying 'beech leaf' or 'bluebird.' She was doing that right from a little girl."
She wrote and published 23 books and illustrated many more, Buckell noted.
"The diversity of her work is incredible."
TRILOGY OF HER CHILDHOOD
Buckell encouraged people to read Newton-White's trilogy about her childhood. The first in the series is titled The Cold Wind in the Winter and it was followed by The Pleasant Summer Sun and The Sunset and the Morning.
"She was an excellent writer. The trilogy she wrote from her childhood, I couldn't put them down. I want to jump into the book and read about that little world she had created. They're really beautiful."
Newton-White's body of work is "a survey of a particular time and a particular place. She surveyed Northern Ontario, the physical environment but also the essence of Northern Ontario. She was an observer, a recorder, a skilled artist who kept things.
"While she lived quietly, there was that little twinkle, because inside, she had that bright flame of an artist."
The exhibition will be at TAG until July 5, and then will be travelling to Timmins and North Bay.
Darlene Wroe, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Temiskaming Speaker
