Aspirations for Excellence

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Wynona Mulcaster, “Clear Day,” 1977, oil on paper (collection of the University of Saskatchewan)

Painter Wynona Mulcaster had a profound effect on the development of serious contemporary art in Saskatchewan, both through her own rigorous art practice and through her extensive teaching career. Along with Reta Cowley and Dorothy Knowles, Wynona Mulcaster, (affectionately known as “Nonie”) was one of a trio of women who created a contemporary template of the prairie environment that defined an era in Saskatchewan landscape painting. Inspired by the open prairie, these artists developed a distinctive style strongly influenced by abstraction and marked by the expressive use of colour and a finely attuned awareness of texture. Their influence permeates the work of succeeding generations of prairie landscape painters.

Nonie Mulcaster was a passionate and dedicated painter, and also a passionate advocate for art education. After obtaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Saskatchewan in 1942, she had aspirations for excellence that took her to many institutions, including the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' School of Art and Design, culminating in a Master of Fine Arts degree from Institute Allende, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in 1976. She brought the sensibilities of a wider art world back to Saskatchewan, and through her work and her teaching, she was instrumental in the development of the contemporary art scene in Saskatchewan, including the foundation of the highly influential Emma Lake Artists Workshops.

Nonie will be on view at the Kenderdine Art Gallery, University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon from Jan. 26 to April 19. 

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Wynona Mulcaster, “Summer Pageant,” 1984, oil on canvas (collection of the Mann Art Gallery, Prince Albert)

Curated by Leah Taylor, this survey exhibition, 20 paintings on paper and canvas, is drawn primarily from the extensive collection of the Mann Art Gallery in Prince Albert, with additional examples from the University of Saskatchewan. The exhibition focuses on her landscapes, which form the bulk of her body of work, and in which she found a great freedom to play with the abstract elements of value, form, colour and line.

The selected works document Mulcaster’s explorations of two places she called home, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Upon these austere plains Mulcaster, who died in 2016, laid the foundations of her modernist interpretation of landscape. Eschewing nostalgic and historic elements, her landscapes are almost devoid of human presence. You will not find depictions of picturesque farmhouses or old abandoned farm equipment here. Instead, there are grand sweeping vistas of open prairie and luminous skies. There is an acute awareness of the bones of the land and its skin of grass, crops and bush, a subtle texture loosely expressed in evocative and decisive strokes of colour. 

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Wynona Mulcaster, “Prairie Slough,” 1991, acrylic on paper (collection of the University of Saskatchewan)

Although all the paintings use an interpretive and painterly style, they range from representational and carefully observed landscapes, such as Prairie Slough, to near abstraction in a bold exploration of colour and form, as in Clear Day. The scenes from Saskatchewan and Mexico are often indistinguishable. The similarities of these dryland plains are accentuated in the focus on the pure landscape, lacking references to local cultures or specific details. Mulcaster’s interest was not in capturing a sense of place, but in depicting “a gritty feeling of dry struggle,” she once said.

The epic sense of scale and the open quality of these landscapes present a harsh yet beautiful environment that dwarfs human activities. Under these wide skies there is no place to hide, no artful layering of rows of decorative hills and screens of foliage. All is laid bare. The hand and mind of the artist are clearly present in every boldly sculpted stroke. ■

Nonie is on view at the Kenderdine Art Gallery of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon until April 19. 

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