Headwaters: Recent Paintings by Clancy Gibson, running until Oct. 31 at Artemis Gallery.
It took moving to Toronto for North Vancouver-born artist Clancy Gibson to develop a newfound appreciation for the lush landscape of Lynn Headwaters.
"I see my beautiful surroundings with fresh, new eyes. The appreciation for where we live is renewed, and it would be hard to not be influenced by the nature surrounding us," says Gibson.
That appreciation has translated into art and Gibson's accidental series of paintings focusing specifically on Lynn Headwaters' natural splendour, with each composition built around a common factor: Lynn Creek. Gibson was a fine artist from the start and had his first showing in 1974. But by 1979 he realized his passion wasn't going to pay the bills.
"And it was hard that time in Vancouver," he recalls. "Fine artists struggle a lot more than commercial artists do." So he became an illustrator and moved to Toronto because it was "the happening spot to be" for an illustrator in the 1980s.
Gibson settled into his eastern surroundings and embarked on an illustrious career that saw him work for multiple well-known advertising agencies in Toronto and the U.S. "When I moved to Toronto I realized how lucrative commercial art can be," he says.
Air Canada, Canada Post, all the major banks, the Royal Canadian Mint were among his clients. Gibson drew everything from dog food to funeral home ads, the latter winning him a design award for creativity. "I scanned all my old jobs a little while ago and I hit a thousand illustrations and I thought, 'God I'm tired,'" says Gibson with a laugh.
When he moved back to his hometown 15 years later, in 1994, his passion for painting was reinvigorated by walking through Lynn Headwaters Regional Park, and that newfound appreciation arose in him.
"It's like saying your sister is pretty if you never move away," explains Gibson. "You come back and you look and you go, 'Wow I've lived somewhere else for a long time and I've never thought about how good this was.'" Gibson wound up buying the house he grew up in, a block away from Ridgeway school. The area is steeped in nostalgia for Gibson whose great aunt was a librarian at the venerable school that both his parents attended. Gibson would also go to Ridgeway, followed by his daughter years later. Gibson's uncle would tell him stories about life on "the creek" back in the '40s when gangs of youth would build cabins and stay out in the woods above Lynn Valley for days.
When he moved back to North Vancouver, Gibson found himself drawn to the canyon, toting his SLR camera so he could later recreate the images in acrylics.
"Water does something - I'm not sure what it is, but it's a big force, you know," he says.
Subconsciously Gibson spent a lot of time under the tree canopies in the headwaters, only realizing his fixation with the area when he saw the paintings he had amassed.
But yet he doesn't consider himself the outdoorsy type.
"I always joke, 'I'll do the Grouse Grind when they put ashtrays there,' that's how outdoorsy I am," says Gibson. "But the nice thing about doing the canyon is it's quite cultivated in terms of the trails and stuff like that."
It was a lifelong North Van friend of Gibson's, Ron Macy, and Artemis Gallery curator Shannon Browne that convinced him to show his work in an exhibit called Headwaters.
"We all grew up in North Van and I think we all shared the same attitude about it, which was it certainly changed a lot since we were growing up but there are certain things that are eternal," explains Gibson. "I think the Headwaters and all that area is one thing that will never change. And it will always be there."
Gibson admits he was reluctant to show his work at first. The self-described perfectionist can't even bear to hang his paintings up at home because he worries he will become obsessed with altering them.
"At first I thought oh my God this might be redundant," he says, of his initial reservations for doing the show. "And my biggest concern would have been, 'OK I've got trees and rocks and water - how boring is this going to be if I have 23 paintings. But I was really pleased when I saw all the paintings together and how well they worked with each other." But when Gibson saw the way the work was displayed in the gallery under the right lighting, his perspective changed.
