| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Norman Yates’ presence is easily visible in Edmonton and Calgary. His mural “West and North” adorns the University of Alberta’s Education Building, along with the mural on the Amoco Building in Calgary. Another mural of his has been rediscovered at the Stanley Milner Library in downtown Edmonton.
Yates grew up on the prairies, serving as a radar technician in the RCAF during WWII, before returning to study commercial and fine arts at the Ontario College of Art. He graduated in 1950, although he and his wife struggled to make a living as artists in Toronto, until the opportunity came in 1954 to teach at the University of Alberta’s fledgling Art Department, recently established by H.G. Glyde. Yates taught at the University of Alberta for 34 years, and was the recipient of the Rutherford Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1986, as well as the Alberta Achievement Award for Excellence in Art (1979). He was highly active in fostering and advocating for the arts in Edmonton, and he received the City of Edmonton’s Creative and Performing Arts Award in the Visual Arts in 1972 in recognition of his efforts.
In his own work, Yates concentrated mostly on prairie landscapes remembered from his youth. A move in 1972 from Edmonton to an acreage outside the city proved to be a turning point in his art. Now immersed in a landscape that was no longer framed or delimited by any border, he began to produce what he called “landspaces”: large-scale, panoramic abstract works that give a sense of boundless space in all three dimensions. At about the same time, he discovered the paintings of J.M.W. Turner in the Tate Gallery in London, spending many hours studying them up close in order to understand Turner’s process.
Norman and his wife retired to Victoria, BC, in 1989. His exploration of the stillness and light of the prairies was now more influenced by ocean colour and movement, but space and energy were still the over-arching themes. His process was unplanned and intuitive, guided by the acrylic paint itself, until he knew the work was complete. His paintings have been described as cosmic, suggesting vast energy fields, a “dialogue with the universe”. Well into late old age, he was still painting, exhibiting and teaching workshops all over BC. At the age of 90, he said, “there is still so much left to learn.”
Yates was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. His work is held at the Art Gallery of Alberta and at the University of Alberta Art Collection, Edmonton; at the National Gallery and at the Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa; at the Vancouver Art Gallery; the Simon Fraser University Centre of the Arts, and the Victoria Conference Centre.
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