A Sublime Vernacular: The Landscape Paintings of Levine Flexhaug

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Levine Flexhaug, "Untitled (Mountain lake with deer)," nd

oil-based house paint on beaver board, 24.5 x 35.5 cm. Collection of Greg and Debbie McIntyre, Regina, Saskatchewan.

Exhibition Opening Public opening reception: Thursday, June 29, 7-9pm Public opening and celebration of the exhibition.

2. Curator talk: Nancy Tousley Friday. June 30, 6pm Join guest curator Nancy Tousley as she discusses the research undertaken with Peter White to produce the exhibition Levine Flexhaug, A Sublime Vernacular: The Landscape Paintings.

A Sublime Vernacular: The Landscape Paintings of Levine Flexhaug offers the first overview of the extraordinary career of Levine Flexhaug (1918 - 1974), born in the Treelon area near Climax, Saskatchewan. It brings together approximately 450 of the artist's paintings as well as several of his mural-sized works. An itinerant painter, he sold thousands of variations of essentially the same landscape painting in national parks, resorts, department stores and bars across western Canada from the late 1930s through the early 1960s. Whatever its variation, a Flexhaug image represents a Western icon, a silent unspoiled Eden that encapsulates the conventions of sublime landscape painting in a kind of painter's shorthand.

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As engaging as they are aesthetically, Flexhaug's paintings also offer a point of entry for consideration of significant critical questions ranging from issues of taste, originality versus repetition in art, the appeal of landscape and its iconography – particularly in the Canadian context – to whether art can have integrity as art even if it is unapologetically commercial. For the Contemporary Art Gallery it continues a strand in our programming where we present work by artists who for a variety of reasons, operated outside of the strict mainstream of the art world.

Alongside the exhibition, we also present Flexie! All the Same and All Different, a feature-length documentary made in association with A Sublime Vernacular: The Landscape Paintings of Levine Flexhaug by Calgary filmmakers Gary Burns and Donna Brunsdale. The film not only tells the story of a little known artist but in its investigation of how people respond to the paintings and what they mean to them, is also a fascinating reflection on both the nature of art and the meaning of place.

The exhibition is curated by Nancy Tousley and Peter White. A publication examining Flexhaug's art and career, the critical issues they raise and the larger social and cultural history they represent accompanies the exhibition.