LEVINE FLEXHAUG: "A Sublime Vernacular: The Landscape Paintings of Levine Flexhaug," MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, May 23 to Aug. 9, 2015

LEVINE FLEXHAUG

A Sublime Vernacular: The Landscape Paintings of Levine Flexhaug

MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina

May 23 to Aug. 9, 2015

By Sarah Ferguson

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Collection of Wayne Morgan and Sharilyn J. Ingram, Grimsby, Ont.

"Untitled (Mountain lake with deer)"

Levine Flexhaug, "Untitled (Mountain lake with deer)," no date, oil-based house paint on beaver board, 9.6” x 14”.

Paintings by Levine Flexhaug are easy to forget. They look like something from a learn-to-paint television show – quick, folksy, feel-good landscapes. Flexhaug is known for reproducing the same image, with minor differences, thousands of times. A cabin beside a tranquil mountain lake, for instance, or a deer silhouetted in a verdant meadow.

So why is Flexhaug the subject of a major touring exhibition organized by the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie? And why, in spite of the stereotypical content, are Saskatchewan artists David Thauberger and Wilf Perreault among the many collectors of Flexhaug’s work? Is an inside joke at work here?

The show’s curators, Peter White and Nancy Tousley, are respected in the art world, but still expect to field some tough questions about their Flexhaug tribute. After all, nothing separates Flexhaug’s repetitive, overly crisp outdoor fantasies from third-rate calendar art. In some circles, his paintings are not considered art at all. But challenging definitions seems to be the point of this exercise.

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Collection of Greg and Debbie McIntyre, Regina.

"Untitled (Mountain lake with deer)"

Levine Flexhaug, "Untitled (Mountain lake with deer)," no date, oil-based house paint on beaver board, 9.6” x 14”.

White is quick to describe the show, which includes some 460 of Flexhaug’s paintings, as an opportunity to raise questions about how art is understood. By placing populist above-the-couch landscapes in a public gallery, the curators hope to stimulate discussions about how – and why – art is categorized into so-called high art, versus low or popular art. A room full of Flexhaug paintings is also likely to prompt conversations about issues of taste, serial production, and the Canadian landscape tradition.

Flexhaug, affectionately known as Flexie, was born in Climax, Sask., in 1918, and worked as an itinerant painter, selling his work in resorts, bars, national parks and department stores from the late 1930s to the early 1960s in order to support his family. He died in 1974.

Works were contributed by 32 Flexie collectors, many of them from Regina, where the show launches in May. “It made sense,” says Griffith Baker, director of the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, which will host the show in 2016. The exhibition will travel to several other Western galleries, including the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary and Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery, serious venues for contemporary art. A website and book are part of the project, and Calgary filmmaker Gary Burns is creating a feature-length documentary about Flexhaug that will be launched in Regina.