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REVIEW BY BECKY RYNOR
Anne Koval’s new book, Mary Pratt: A Love Affair with Vision, makes me feel like I hadn’t previously paid close enough attention to this iconic Canadian artist or her work. I interviewed Pratt at length and wrote about her before she died in 2018 at age 83; stared into the jewel-like tones of her jelly jars; studied her capture of the beauty in the ordinary, everyday – a rumpled bed, a fish on a plate or a recently devoured meal.
But art historian Koval introduces us to a young, fiery Mary West that adds new layers to her oeuvre. This was before her marriage to Newfoundland artist Christopher Pratt, four children and a slew of domestic duties had her mostly painting from an easel beside the kitchen sink. (Hubby Christopher, meanwhile, was ensconced in his nearby studio, not to be disturbed, Pratt once told me.)
Mary West in red velvet gown, undated, photographer unknown (courtesy of the publisher)
Growing up in a tony neighbourhood in Fredericton, N.B., Mary recalls rebelling against her solidly conservative parents and grandmother by “walking barefoot downtown in Fredericton, kissing boys on the steps of my father’s house, thumbing my nose at the neighbours who hid behind curtains to watch.” In another interview, Pratt also admits to “throwing shoes at my father, hurling sharp insults at my mother.” Not only could those trademark blue eyes twinkle, they could apparently also shoot sparks. Then we meet a perhaps more wistful Mary West in an undated photo of her as a young woman. Now wearing fancy gold sandals and a red velvet gown, she is sunk into a deep, dark green armchair, gazing unflinchingly at whoever is holding the camera. You want to know: who merits that look?
This is the only sanctioned biography about Mary Pratt, shaped by Koval’s extensive interviews with the artist, her family, friends and colleagues. Koval also had unprecedented access to Pratt’s fonds at Mount Allison University, including her personal journals. The result is an intimate, revealing narrative that will prompt the reader to return to familiar favourites and to find a deeper context.
Mary Pratt, “Grilse on Glass,” 1980
oil on Masonite, 20" x 26" (courtesy of the publisher)
A good example is Pratt’s Grilse on Glass (1980). Thirty years after its execution, Pratt writes: “There is a lot of play in this painting. The difference between ‘the real’ and the formalized ‘imagined.’ The shine of fish scales and the glow of glass scales. The shadow of the central image that reconsiders reality.”
Pratt’s painting of the very proper dining room in the family home in Fredericton is at once a loving memory but also, Koval writes “unheimlich.” This is a reference to Freud’s study of the uncanny “where both the familiar and unfamiliar are present at once – as a strangeness found in the ordinary.”
Mary Pratt, “Girl in a Wicker Chair,” 1978
oil on Masonite, 38" x 33" (courtesy of the publisher)
Readers will most certainly linger over Girl in a Wicker Chair, 1978, given the added personal – likely painful, for Pratt – subtext to this painting. The “girl” is Donna Meaney, a local from Mount Carmel, NB, hired to be a model for Christopher and domestic help for Mary so she would have more time to paint. Sleeping in an improvised bedroom between the kitchen and Christopher’s studio, it wasn’t long before Meaney “became more than just a muse for Christopher.” Pratt said surviving this period in her life “was sad…there is something in your head telling you that such and such is happening. A voice is telling you. But you ignore that voice.”
In 1977, Christopher offered Mary his slide of Donna posing in the wicker chair “because he was going to throw this one out,” she said. Mary took the offer as a symbolic gesture that the affair was over. Girl in a Wicker Chair became Mary’s first and much acclaimed female nude although she acknowledges, “I was aware that she was looking at Christopher, not me, and this difficult knowledge has continued to plague me.”
Mary Pratt’s frank, forthright personality shines throughout A Love Affair with Vision. Be prepared to sit up a little straighter as you thumb through this book, peer a little more closely at her images and the photographs of her life. See the artist beyond the twinkling eyes, the warm smile, the often-self-deprecating laugh. Mary West is in there. You will be glad to know her. ■
Mary Pratt: A Love Affair with Vision, by Anne Koval, Goose Lane Editions, 2023.
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