This week, the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library takes us back to look at the story of Ken Danby's sports paintings
On March 6, 1940, Edison Danby and Gertrude Buckley welcomed their second son, Kenneth at the General Hospital in Sault Ste. Marie. Little did they know his name would adorn a plaque on the Sault’s Walk of Fame and a city street sign, just as his realist art would adorn countless household walls, international galleries like New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and even Olympic coins.
Design requirements stated that the images must “depict early Canadian sports with an emphasis on the Summer Olympics”. Danby chose rowing, cycling, canoeing and lacrosse- Canada’s only legislated national sport at the time- for his winning set. Indigenous athletes are featured on two of the four coins- canoeing and lacrosse- in honour of their origins.
Around the same time, Danby was named the first recipient of the R. Tait McKenzie Chair for Sports established at the National Centre for Sport in Ottawa. He was also commissioned to complete six watercolours by the National Sport and Recreation Centre in 1976. Each piece contained an individual athlete: “The Gymnast”, “The High Jumper”, “The Diver”, “The Sprinter”, “The Sculler” and “The Cyclist”.
In a CBC interview, Danby spoke of his process saying, “Everything that I paint is a result of my personal vision and experience. But that doesn’t mean that everything that I paint is as I saw it. What you will see is what I want you to see. Not what I saw. Everything that I respond to in my work is the result of a lot of analysis; a lot of restructuring; a lot of synthesizing- what to leave in, what to take out, what to diminish, what to emphasize. It’s a wrestling match.
Throughout the month of August, James L. McIntyre Centennial Library will feature some of Ken Danby’s Olympic sports art found in the library’s archives and book collection. It will be located in the glass case next to Reference Services.
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