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Joan McConnell with a stoneware sculpture by Byungjoo Suh called "Heron of Alexandria."
Joan McConnell with a stoneware sculpture by Byungjoo Suh called "Heron of Alexandria."
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Joan McConnell.
Joan McConnell.
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Joan McConnell with a stoneware sculpture by Byungjoo Suh called "Heron of Alexandria."
Joan McConnell with a stoneware sculpture by Byungjoo Suh called "Heron of Alexandria."
COLLECTOR PROFILE
Joan McConnell
Salt Spring Island
By Dina O'Meara
Joan McConnell bought her first piece of art in 1947, one month after getting married in Australia. The piece, a copy of a luminous landscape by Australian Elioth Gruner, was all the young librarian could afford. Today, McConnell, owns some 80 works of art, from prints and lithographs to oil paintings and sculptures, primarily by Canadian artists.
The inspiration to buy that copy of a Gruner — and everything since — was to surround herself with beauty, McConnell, 86, says from her home on Salt Spring Island. Art is what differentiates humans from animals, she says, and is the white in the black of a world beset by war and greed. “Art is the redeemer for humans, in all its forms. And we do need redemption.”
Not surprisingly, McConnell calls herself a philosophical collector, one who believes the creative expression found in music, theatre and the visual arts elevates humans. She started buying original art in 1967, after her children left for university, and also added a political science degree to her earlier bachelor’s degree in art.
Her first purchase was a lithograph by Newfoundland artist David Blackwood, bought at a fundraiser for the Thomas More Institute, a lifelong-learning centre in Montreal. The artist was starting to garner attention and public acclaim, and McConnell became one of the few in the city to have a coveted Blackwood. “Find a beginning artist, and that means looking around your own community,” McConnell advises new collectors. “Find them and encourage them.”
She also recommends watching a documentary on Herbert and Dorothy Vogel, who over decades amassed a 2,000-piece collection that includes some of North America’s most important contemporary artists. The couple used his salary as a New York postal clerk to buy art from emerging artists and paid the bills with her salary as a librarian. “Then you can see art is not beyond you,“ says McConnell, who wishes she’d had the same advice as a young bride in New South Wales.