Artist of the day, March 23, 2020: Kim Ondaatje, a Canadian painter, printmaker, film director, and quilt maker (#949)

Kim Ondaatje (1928) is a Canadian painter. She studied at the Ontario College of Art and McGill University. She completed an M.A. in Canadian Literature at Queen's University, while on a teaching fellowship. Until 1964, Ondaatje served as a part-time lecturer at Wilfred Laurier University and Sherbrooke University. In the early 1960s she returned to the visual arts again and by 1965 was painting full time.

As a visual artist, Kim Ondaatje produced a unique body of work. Committing herself to paint full-time by the early 1960s, Ondaatje later also became an award-winning printmaker, directed two art films and three documentaries, and published three books of photography. In her paintings, Ondaatje pursued a variety of interests. After an early period of paintings throughout the 1950s, she composed three major series. The first was the Hill Series (1964-67), a group of abstracted landscapes done with the palette knife. The series entitled House on Piccadilly Street (1967-70) followed. This series eventually included large-scale silkscreen prints. The final group of paintings, the Factory Series (1970-74), continued the minimal-realist concerns of the Piccadilly series, but on a large scale.

Ondaatje's research on traditional Ontario quilt-making and design led to a large national touring exhibition of patchwork quilts (1974-76), and a documentary film. She has also taught in the arts during the course of her career, working for the London Public Gallery, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen's University, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Emily Carr College's Outreach Program in British Columbia and the Yukon.

With many exhibitions of her paintings and prints in Canada and abroad, her films, and her photography, she has received national and international recognition.

An artist with deep roots in Canadian art history, Ondaatje has made a substantial and serious contribution of her own. Her work is situated in a history of Canadian art after the internationalist nonobjective work of the Automatistes, the Regina Five, and Painters Eleven, a history in which the "local" took on increasingly complex meanings and greater and greater importance while demonstrating full awareness of the larger art world.

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Ms. Kim Ondaatje

1950, Forest Floor, Keewaydin

1959, Sumac

1965, Mid-Summer

1968, Stairway

1969, Hall Window #2

1970, Domtar with Truck

1970, Pine Cupboard from Piccadilly Series

1971, Dom Tar with Train

1971, Cuckoo Clock from Piccadilly Series

1971, Furnace from Piccadilly Series

1972, Blue Bedroom from Piccadilly Series

1972, Sideboard with Lamp from Piccadilly Series

1972, Sudbury Landscape

1973, Inco Slag Train from Factory Series

1973, Lake Ontario Cement from Factory Series

1973, Shell Oil Oakville from Factory Series

1973, Steetley on Highway #5 from Factory Series

1973, Back Kitchen from Piccadilly Series

1974, Carlings on 401 from Factory Series

1974, Hearn Plant, Toronto Harbour from Factory Series

1974, Chair from Piccadilly Series

1974,  Doors from Piccadilly Series

Hearn Plant, Toronto Harbour