Reception: Saturday, December 1, 2PM

Art Placement is pleased to present the exhibition, About a Lake, showcasing the latest suite of landscape paintings and drawings by Clint Hunker. Since the age of 16, Hunker has painted and drawn the Saskatchewan landscape. Following in the footsteps of notable prairie artists like Reta Cowley and Augustus Kenderdine among others, he is a field painter who works predominantly on site with nature serving as both his inspiration and studio. His paintings, in the tradition of the great impressionist masters, are characterized by their focus on light, the subtleties of colour, and loose yet precisely placed brushstrokes. Quiet and contemplative, each painting is a meditation on solitude, silence, and beauty within the prairie landscape.

In this latest series of paintings, Hunker has focused his attention on lakes of the grasslands and prairie regions of the province, a subject often neglected, as he notes:

"Knowing a place is key to my working process for the present. In the past prairie lakes have been looked down upon as weedy or alkali, glorified sloughs, to be blocked, dammed, or shored up to contain precious water. They have none of the romance of northern lakes with their clear water and rocky shorelines. Watching a boulder bare itself as water recedes from May to October, boats and storms all have a beauty and poetry that demonstrates the rhythm of the seasons. These paintings are about this experience. They are not formal challenges only and are not simply emotionally driven but both, as much about the past as the present."

Clint Hunker was born in Saskatoon. He studied art at the University of Victoria, completing an MFA at the University of Saskatchewan where he has remained a lecturer in painting and drawing since 1987. His works have been presented in group and solo exhibitions in Western Canada since the late 1970s and can be found in private, corporate, and public collections at home and abroad.

Clint Hunker, "Blues and Haze", 2018, Oil on linen, 11" x 14"

Clint Hunker, "Waves from the Shallows", 2018, Oil on linen, 11" x 14"

Clint Hunker, "Evening, Cold Storm", 2018, Oil on linen, 11" x 15"

Clint Hunker, "After Harvest, Slough Road", 2018, Oil on linen, 10" x 13"