Artwork of the Week!

Week 15:

Bruce Head (born 1931)
Conversation
1957
Oil on canvas

Ever since Winnipeg artist Bruce Head graduated from the School of Art at the University of Manitoba in 1953, his bold, abstract paintings, prints and sculptures have garnered attention. Like his comrades Ernest Wilson and Frank Mikuska, Head was employed for many years as a graphic designer. In fact, Head and Mikuska worked together as graphic artists for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. But Head’s day job did not prevent him from establishing an active career in visual art. Over the years, he received many local commissions, most notably the expansive circular sculptured concrete wall in the underground concourse at Portage and Main.

Head’s earliest commission, however, was a large mural for the Manitoba Teacher’s college in 1959. This work, titled The Seasons, is stylistically similar to the early painting Conversation. Both works demonstrate thorny enclosed shapes and sections of brilliant colour that seem to dance energetically across the surface. The dark outlines of Conversation become more dense in the middle of the canvas to suggest an encounter of meeting.