VISUAL ART
Off the Grid: Abstract Painting in New Brunswick
Orthodoxy has it that, in its heyday, abstract painting in Canada was practised primarily in Quebec (the Automatistes), Ontario (Painters Eleven) and the West (Regina Five, Emma Lake workshops). However, it seems it also enlisted a core of sophisticated adherents in New Brunswick, either from or associated with the province. The Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton has just opened an ambitious exhibition of some 70 abstract works by 20-plus artists, dead and living. The real revelation is probably the oils and watercolours, nine in all, by Rupert D. Turnbull (1899-1950). Born in New Jersey to Canadian parents, he spent his formative years in Rothesay, N.B., and by 1930 was fully (and expertly) committed to the non-representational aesthetic. (Through Sept. 14) James Adams