| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Born in Amsterdam, Jan Boning immigrated to Canada in 1957 and began creating art in 1963 while working at a silkscreen shop. After experimenting with producing prints, in 1977 he opened Omniscreen, his family print shop that continues to operate, and with which he produced prints for many of his fellow artists.
Boning’s melancholic Embark series of five colour-saturated serigraphs contain brief poems in text beside each image. The piece “On a Long Journey” contains an indigo background fronted by two red flowers, one upright with living green leaves and the other stripped of leaves and prone; the text reads: “the worlds I owned before/I do not own it anymore/my skin is without breath/my eyes are without motion/my words are/amputated.” The print “Departure” features red cowrie shell-shaped figures before a slate field; its text reads “the clouds are moving like/little children past the/sensitive sky and /they cast upon me/like a sovereign.”
During the 1970s he was president of the Manitoba Society of Artists, and resumed his presidency during 2006, a term cut short by his unexpected death on October 13, 2006. In 2009, Boning’s work appeared in a posthumous solo exhibition of serigraphs in 'A Life in Print' at the Martha Street Studio in Winnipeg. |