Saskatchewan Artist

Overhead - 2010 - by Terry Fenton

Terry Fenton

Terry Fenton was born in 1940 in Regina, Saskatchewan. Beginning in 1958, he spent two years studying art at Regina College's School of Fine Art (now University of Regina) with Roy Kiyooka, Ronald Bloore, and Arthur McKay. Fenton then attended the Saskatoon campus to study English literature, receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1962. In addition to post-graduate studies at the University of Regina (1965-1966), Fenton attended artists' workshops at Emma Lake, Saskatchewan with Lawrence Alloway and John Cage (1965), Frank Stella (1967), and Michael Steiner (1969).

Fenton's career as a curator, art critic, lecturer, consultant, and writer has seen him involved in numerous galleries and organizations in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the United States. Fenton served as Assistant to the Director of the MacKenzie Art Gallery from 1965 to 1971, and since has been frequently involved with the Emma Lake Artists' workshops, the Edmonton Art Gallery, Saskatoon's Mendel Art Gallery, and the Saskatchewan Arts Alliance. Along with Anthony Caro and Anthon Loder, he co-founded the Triangle Artists Workshop in New York in 1982. Fenton has written many articles and books on a range of artists, including Anthony Caro and Kenneth Noland.

Fenton's still life and landscape paintings and documentary photography have been exhibited througout Canada and in New York. Fenton is particularly drawn to open prairie spaces that may to some appear sparse and empty. He writes: “Because of their apparent lack of scenery, the open prairies haven't been much painted by anyone. Even painters who've flourished in Saskatchewan have preferred the river valleys in the plains or the aspen parkland and forest to the north and east. While I admire and have absorbed much from them, I'm drawn south and west to the grasslands, partly because I was born and raised in Regina, but especially because the colour and light there is so luminous. Because the solutions found by painters from the past don't work well in the wide-open spaces, I look for new ones.”

In addition to private and corporate collections in Canada, the United States, and England, Fenton's work is represented in important public collections including the Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa), MacKenzie Art Gallery (Regina), Saskatchewan Arts Board, Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon), Edmonton Art Gallery, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and Kamloops Art Gallery.

Terry Fenton lived in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan for much of the last twenty years, but moved to Victoria, British Columbia in 2013.