Sign of the Times

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Ray Renooy (Coz), “Return to Summer,” 2018

chalk pastel, 12” x 20” (photo by Jeff Gasenzer)

Few artists would feature a highway sign as an image’s central feature. Such markers of place are so commonplace we scarcely notice them – unless we’re searching for a destination. Yet they imprint somehow on that subconscious part of our mind where we see without seeing.

So it is with Ray Renooy, a former Winnipeg sign painter, who has been making art since moving to Vancouver Island a few years ago. His pastel drawing, Return to Summer, points travellers to Sandy Bay, Victoria Beach and Wanasing Beach, holiday spots along Lake Winnipeg. The empty highway is lined by trees, and in the ditches, scraps of dirty snow point to spring’s arrival. The image is completely unremarkable, yet somehow evokes the timeless promise of a season yet to come.

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Ray Renooy (Coz), “Home Alone,” 2017

acrylic on canvas, 16” x 20” (photo by Bozlo)

It stands out amongst Renooy’s other works, mostly of abandoned farmhouses and old grain elevators. It’s puzzling until you check his biography at Winnipeg’s Warehouse Artworks, where his show, Changing Values, is on view from Feb. 1 to Feb. 15.

It notes that Renooy’s love of illustration and typography drew him to the advertising art program at Winnipeg’s Red River College in 1974. He then apprenticed in sign writing with a local business, and eventually started his own graphic art business, Cosmic Rays Design. He became known as “Coz” and still uses that name for his art.

Renooy grew up in small-town Manitoba and his paintings refer to the isolation of the Prairies and the passing of old rural ways of life, perhaps mostly ably summed up in Home Alone, which shows an abandoned farmhouse, its windows open to the weather, in a snow-swept field.

Renooy talks about the challenges of being an artist, with the ability to choose subject matter and make stylistic decisions, after spending decades with clients who had clear ideas about what they wanted. “The big difference,” he says, “is the freedom.” ■

Ray Renooy’s show, Changing Values, is on view at Warehouse Artworks in Winnipeg from Feb. 1 to Feb. 15, 2019.