Artworks

This well-known work by Tom Forrestall, Looking Up the Road, probably depicts a hitchhiker, left arm hidden, presumably held forward to flag down the oncoming vehicle which has captured his attention. With his back facing the viewer, and just a partial profile, we have only a hint of his person. One can interpret the tractor as a symbol of a rural setting. The relative anonymity of these elements implies that it is not they, but something else, which is the real focus here. Works by Forrestall can be provocative, psychological as much as they are technically outstanding. With imagery evocative of a time and place, the painting is a time capsule. Looking up the Road presents each viewer with a mysterious composition of relatively common objects, and leaves each of us to contemplate its meaning.

Tom Forrestall is one of Atlantic Canada’s finest post-WWll artists. He exhibited at Walter Klinkhoff Gallery in Montreal from the mid-1960s until the early 1970s. Dropping by Alan Klinkhoff Gallery in 2017, Tom related to us that it was with Walter Klinkhoff Gallery that he had his first complete sold out exhibition.

The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia writes:

Thomas DeVany Forrestall, C.M., O.C., O.N.S., B.F.A. LL.D., R.C.A was born in Middleton, Nova Scotia, in 1936. Forrestall's family later moved to Dartmouth which allowed him to attend Saturday morning art classes at the Nova Scotia College of Art in Halifax in the 1940s. In 1954, Forrestall was awarded a scholarship to the Fine Arts department at Mount Allison University, where he studied with Lawren P. Harris and Alex Colville. He graduated in 1958, and received one of the first Canada Council grants for independent study, which provided him with the opportunity to travel throughout Europe. Upon his return he became assistant curator of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. He has been a freelance artist since 1960.

Forrestall's art has been classified as Magic Realism - an imprecise term often used to describe the work of a coterie of east-coast Canadian painters who emerged after the Second World War, including Alex Colville, Christopher Pratt and Mary Pratt. Although their geographic roots, styles and vocabularies were similar, these artists applied themselves differently, each adapting naturalism in a personal way.

As an artist, Tom Forrestall is one of the leading figures associated with the visual arts of the Maritime region. His work has been exhibited and represented in every major public collection in the region and beyond, as well as in solo exhibitions in many prominent galleries worldwide. His art has been reproduced in numerous histories of Canadian art and is featured in 'High Realism in Canada', the 1974 book by Paul Duval. Two monographs on his paintings have been published, 'Shaped by This Land' (1974) and 'Returning the Favour: Vision for Vision' (1992) [1].

_________________________________

Footnote: 

[1] Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Tom Forrestall: Paintings, Drawings, Writings (10 May 2007 - 9 November 2008) Exhibition, Retrieved from : https://agns.ca/exhibition/tom-forrestall-paintings-drawings-writings/