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ADAM NOONAN BY DENISE RUDNICKI / PHOTO BY VINCE KLASSEN The artist may be still and quiet, but his paintings vibrate with colour THE PAINTING on the easel in Adam Noonan’s outdoor studio grabs the eye the way sudden movement does. It fairly vibrates with colour. The subject matter is typical Noonan — an out building with a roof the colour of fire on a sundappled driveway. You can almost taste the summer heat. I’ve come here to find out where Noonan gets his creative spark. What was it about this driving shed on this road on this day that made him want to preserve it in oils? I wait for the answer, wondering what deep insights he’ll share. After a long, contemplative pause, Noonan says, “I like the colour.” This is, as I come to learn over the next few days, pure Noonan. He loathes art-speak, is reticent to talk about what makes him creative, and is so self-effacing I almost expect him to scrub his toe into the dust and say “shucks.” |
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Yet he has, through hard work over 30 years, taken his place on the Canadian art scene. His paintings sell for between $1,000 and $6,000. He is collected around the world by people who admire his talent with light and shadows. He is constantly compared to painters such as Tom Thomson and Lawren Harris. An American art-lover has only Group of Seven and Adam Noonan in his collection. Noonan likes the comparison to Harris and admires him more than any other painter. “His Gunter Heinrich owns Winchester Galleries, where Noonan has exhibited since 1994, and whose latest show opens December 2nd. Heinrich says he particularly likes Noonan’s “big juicy brushwork.” Noonan laughs in a way that actually sounds like ha-ha, and says “Well... liberal with the paint and conservative with the bullshit.” Seventy-year-old Noonan did not start painting until he was in his 40s. He was a photographer in Toronto, sold antiques for awhile, and was in the brokerage business when he started taking painting lessons nights and weekends at the Toronto School of Art.
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Noonan is famous for his paintings of shops, houses, out-buildings and other Victoria-area structures. How does he choose? “I get my ideas from real life,” he says. “If I’m driving around in my car and I see something that looks attractive then I’ll back up and have another look.” What catches his eye is light. Light and shadows. “I just love it when the sun hits something. I love the warm colours.” Iola Scott, Noonan’s wife, is also a painter. They met in 1997 when they took ballroom dancing lessons in Victoria. “I remember him saying years ago that he loved to see the light shining at the side of a building. That’s really what inspires him. Adam seems to find the sun wherever he goes.” Noonan has a unique way of capturing what he sees on his drives through the city and countryside. Unlike many painters this former professional photographer does not take pictures at the scene. Instead he paints in his Chrysler Sebring convertible. He has a device on the side of the steering wheel for a palette and another over the wheel that serves as an easel. He will complete a small oil sketch this way in about two hours. The sketch provides all he needs for the larger painting, which he finishes in his outdoor studio in the backyard of his Cedar Hill home. That process takes three to four hours. Noonan doesn’t use canvas. He doesn’t like the way it moves when he paints, so he goes to Windsor Plywood and buys 1/8-inch medium-density fibreboard. That is then cut to size. Noonan covers it with a sealer, then gesso, then paints it all over with an orangey wash. That orange colour creates the warm base that he and his many fans love.
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“Adam is a disciplined painter,” says Winchester’s Gunter Heinrich. “A lot of artists will do a show and stop. You have to encourage them to get back to it. Adam is always at it.” Except when he isn’t. Noonan says he does not paint all the time, that it ebbs and flows. “If I don’t feel like it, I don’t do it. I might not paint for a month and then go crazy and paint every day for three months.” And what causes such a painting frenzy? “It’s kind of self-fulfilling. If you do a couple that you like, it’s like having a drink. You want another one.” A few days after our first meeting, Noonan is on the patio in front of Winchester Galleries on Humboldt, participating in a paint-out. This is a chance for the public to watch painters and speak to them about their work. I’m curious to see how this reluctant talker will get on with people. He’s brought the painting of the driving shed and stands before his easel, dabbing at it. A woman approaches him and tells him she has one of his paintings. So far, she’s doing all the talking. She hung the painting at the top of a dark staircase, hoping to give it a shot of light and colour. “Every time I go up those stairs I see that painting and it makes me feel good.” When Noonan hears this, he comes to life and fairly beams. “Oh! That makes me feel good.” It’s a brief, virtually one-sided exchange but I’ve not seen him this animated or happy in our short time together. The woman wanders away and Noonan keeps dabbing at his painting. He stops. “Boy, that makes me feel good that it makes her happy. People are too serious about art. It has to make you feel good,” he says, adding that her comments are as good as “green feedback” (buying a painting). If Noonan were a colour right now, he’d be orange. |