Ken Tolmie

I spent my sixteenth summer on a family farm in Ontario, Canada, with only a book of
Van Gogh’s drawings and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Something clicked in my brain and when I went back to Nova Scotia in the fall I decided to become an artist. Art School and fifteen years of experimentation with Surrealism, stripe paintings, abstract pieces, glazing pieces and kinetic sculpture gave me an extensive grounding in techniques. Back on earth I finally decided to turn to realism which was my goal in the first place. I’d like to think that all those adventures in techniques gave me a broader range of choices and tolerances than might be typically found with a realist.

At age twenty with my BFA and a new wife I moved to London where for the next two years I did a series of pencil drawings on a plain white ground. Then we moved to Spain where both of us wrote short stories for a year.

Once back in Canada I started my first major project, the Bridgetown Series, (1979 to the present) which was a portrait of a small Nova Scotia town. It was a complex portrait. It consisted of paintings, watercolour and watercolour dry-brush, of the townscape, the landscape, the people and the animals. I regarded them all as a sequence of port...

I hold a First Class Honours BFA (1962) from the School of Fine Art, Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada, where I studied with Alex Colville and Lawren P. Harris, well known Canadian artists. I spent a lot of time studying the art collections in London, England, and Chicago, United States of America.

Since 2007 Ken has sold a number of large paintings privately.

2007
- "A Tribute to Alex Colville: Then and Now," Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, May 12–August 26, 2007, invitational group exhibition.
- Miniatures in Oil, Austin Galleries, Austin, Texas, August–September, 2007

2006
Group exhibition, Austin Galleries, Austin, Texas, USA

2003
Group exhibition, Austin Galleries, Austin, Texas, USA

2001
Tolmie Gallery, Toronto, ON: The Window Series (solo exhibition)

1996
- The Window Series, Lunenburg Public Art Gallery, Lunenburg, NS (solo exhibition)
- The Window Series, Zwickers Gallery, Halifax, NS (solo exhibition)

1977 to 1996
Tolmie Gallery, Bridgetown and Mahone Bay, NS (annual summer exhibition)

1986
- Kaspar Gallery, Toronto, ON (solo exhibition)
- Beckett Gallery, Hamilton, ON (solo exhibition)

1982 to 1984
Ken Tolmie: The Bridgetown Series, sponsored by the Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, and National Museums of Canada, cross-Canada touring exhibition through ten art galleries

1975
Wells Gallery, Ottawa, ON (solo exhibition)

1974
- Contemporary Canadian Graphics, Art Gallery of Brant, Brantford, ON: (group exhibition)
- Wells Gallery, Ottawa, ON (solo ex...