Duncan de Kergommeaux

Duncan de Kergommeaux is a Canadian painter and appointed to the Royal Canadian Academy (RCA). He has maintained a rigorous studio practice since 1953 with over 60 solo exhibitions and several major museum retrospectives. His work is included in private, corporate, and public collections in Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa with significant holdings in the Carleton University Art Gallery, The Ottawa Art Gallery, Museum London (formerly The London Regional Art Gallery), and the McIntosh Gallery at Western University.

During the 1970s through 1993, he was a professor and Head of Studio Art at Western University. He received three full-year study leaves to work full-time on his artist practice in Paris and New York, where he kept a working studio for several years.

Now in his early 90’s he continues to paint in his Ottawa studio.

A catalogue of his exhibition These Are the Marks I Make: Duncan de Kergommeaux, at the Ottawa art Gallery and Museum London in 2010/11 includes text by Bernard Bonario, Emily Falvey and Curator, Andrea Fatona exploring aspects of his creative journey. De Kergommeaux had a solo exhibition of Cow Paintings at the Embassy Cultural House from September 15 to October 13, 1983 from which the McIntosh Gallery purchased a large painting for their permanent collection. This Embassy exhibition also generated the interest for a large solo exhibition at Museum London in 1986, Duncan de Kergommeaux: An Art of Ordered Sensations curated by Mathew Teitlebaum. For more information, please visit his website.

Work by Duncan

Oil on canvas 40x40, 2019-2020 1. Fresh Start: 2. Looking Back: 3. Thanks Emmet: 4. Family Tree: 5. Portrait of a Poet: 6.The Wasteland: 7. Olives in My saddlebag: 8. Acrobat: 9. Night Flight: 10. Blue Bird of Happiness: 11. Blue Moon: 12. New Hanging [MOMA}

"My muse was the poetry of T.S. Elliot and William Carlos Williams which I would read on winter nights in Mexico during the winter of 2017/18. I was particularly fascinated by the way Elliot could combine such disparate ideas into a strange and wonderful poetic space that still resonates today.

For me it is always a strange and wonderful space to occupy when starting a new body of work; a groping, reflective space of hope and anxiety; never knowing where the journey will take me in my quest to make art that confirms and adds substance to my vision of life’s meaning.

Starting with sketches I did in Mexico, there are 48 seminal works leading up to this group of 12 new paintings."

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The Embassy Cultural House (ECH) is located on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Chonnonton peoples, at the forks of Deshkan Ziibi (Antler River), an area subject to the Dish with One Spoon Covenant Wampum and other treaties, colonized as London, Ontario. The ECH strives to create meaningful relationships between the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island and our contributors. The ECH honours the stewardship of the many Indigenous peoples who have resided on these lands since time immemorial.