Life’s Like That

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Walt Humphries, “Old Town vs. New Town,” 1985

watercolour, 27” x 33" (photo by Bill Braden; collection of Perry and Donna Smith)

Walt Humphries burns Yellowknife to the ground, at least on canvas. Old Town vs. New Town sketches an apocalyptic scene of overturned cars, flaming buildings and a bureaucrat strung from a traffic light, presumably by the fictional N.W.T. Liberation Army, fighting to defend the shacks of Old Town from the suburban incursions of New Town. 

Humphries, a self-taught artist who worked for years as a prospector, says he tried to capture the mood of the time in his 1985 painting,

“You know, art’s one of those things,” says Humphries.  “You either like it or you don’t.” 

Humphries avoids stereotypes and instead humorously captures – with copious detail – what it’s really like to live in the North. 

A long-time fixture in Yellowknife, he can be found at the raucous Gold Range bar or in the local newspaper, where he spins yarns about his latest finds at the dump for an award-winning column.

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Walt Humphries, “Geophysical Wizardry,” 1991

watercolour, 27” x 33" (photo by Bill Braden; collection of Laurie Weir)

Humphries, born and raised near London, Ont., first came to the Northwest Territories in 1969 as part of a mineral exploration crew. By 1974, he had made a permanent move to hunt minerals across the North. 

“When I was a kid, I was a doodler,” he says. As an adult, those doodles morphed into pen-and-ink and watercolour paintings, often populated by hordes of cartoonish people.

His inspirations can be mundane. “I was sitting out at my trailer at Northlands, looking out the kitchen window and it struck me, how come no one paints Northlands Trailer Park?” His musings led to his dog’s-eye view painting, Life’s Like That.

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Walt Humphries, “Life’s Like That,” 1989

watercolour, 30” x 24.5" (photo by Bill Braden)

The painting is part of his show at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife. The show was to run until June, but the gallery recently announced it is closed "until further notice" to help prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Humphries has faced criticism for both his folksy style and less-than-flattering content. But he has continued making art that reflects what he sees and how he feels. 

When curators Bill Braden and Sarah Swan collected his paintings for the retrospective, which opened in December, they found pieces he’d forgotten about entirely. “Some of the works, I don’t have pictures of them,” he says. “I’d see it and go: Whoa! Gee, I remember doing that.” 

The curators whittled hundreds of works down to a selection that captures the breadth of his practice. Over the years, he’s explored everything from claustrophobic cityscapes to vast empty landscapes, showing the stark contrasts of a rapidly changing region. 

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Walt Humphries, “Old Cabin (near old fish plant),” 1982

watercolour, 24” x 21" (photo by Bill Braden)

Swan notes Humphries’ affection for the North as well as his unique perspective. “I can say this with certainty now,” she writes in her curatorial essay. “His art has something we need.”

For his part, Humphries thinks folks need to realize they are artists too.

“There’s lots of people who do art in everyday life and don’t realize it,” he says. “Like putting up their Christmas displays, or the way they arrange their garden. Art is what people do.

“It would be boring if everybody was the same, or if everybody conformed, or there weren’t people that did peculiar things.” ■ 

Walt Humphries' show, Life’s Like That, was to run at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife until June 2020. The gallery recently announced it has closed temporarily due to the COVID-19 virus. 

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