| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Gilbert Flodberg has devoted much of his artistic career to celebrating the landscape of Alberta. He has also made important contributions to the landscape of the province in terms of art education. He first attended the then-Alberta College of Art (ACA), Calgary, in 1955, studying under the landscape artist Illingworth Kerr, his long-time mentor and friend. Flodberg left to spend ten years on the West Coast as a seaman, but returned to the ACA and graduated in 1969 with Honours and several awards. He worked as Creative Director for Watson Advertising in Calgary, and as a freelance art director and illustrator. In 1972 he returned once again to the ACA, this time as curator of the ACA Gallery. He also served as an instructor at the College, teaching design, illustration and drawing from 1973-1983. He taught as a guest instructor at the ACA Watercolour Workshop in 1996, and retired with Emeritus status in 1998.
He held his first show in 1981 at Sundance Gallery in Calgary. His oils, acrylics and watercolours are the result of intense observation of the colours and textures of the ever-changing Southern Alberta landscape. The works vary from the grandeur of foothills vistas to a detailed study of a single tree, transforming the ordinary and overlooked into individuality. He was originally influenced by the early American Impressionist painters and 20th-century Modernists, as well as by Kerr. He creates detail through his interests in design and textile, creating the flat patterning and richly-detailed surfaces of tapestries and rugs. “Rolling Patterns Tapestry South of Priddis” (1984) depicts just these textures, as do the close-up branches of “Autumn at Inglewood” (1984), creating a combination of invention and description. Flodberg’s time-consuming process of applying many thin layers of acrylic and oil paint allows for contemplation and slow evolution.
He has had solo exhibits at Masters Gallery, the Leighton Foundation, Sundance Gallery, and at Canadiana Fine Arts Gallery, all in Calgary, and at the West End Gallery, Edmonton; and in various group shows in Edmonton and Calgary. During the 1980s- 90s, he was commissioned to paint murals for the Baffin Island Contact Centre; for the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Contact Centre (co-artist); and the Tower Mural, Sky 360 Restaurant, Calgary. His work is held in collections at the Government of Alberta, the Royal Bank of Canada, Shell Canada Ltd, Mobil Oil Canada Ltd, NOVA Corporation, the SAIT permanent collection, the A.C. Leighton Foundation, the Johnson’s Canyon Centre, the Walter C. Mackenzie Health Sciences Centre (Edmonton), the Foothills Hospital (Calgary); and the Emile Walters Foundation, USA, amongst many others.
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