Passionate about art, life and love 2006
Ok here I go again with one of those lovly articles that I've collected. I promise that this one is not as long as the last.
People always talk about the parties. That's what they remember about Tom Hodgson's life. They happened wherever he lived or in whatever studio he worked - be it the Pit, as it was called, at King and Church Sts., the house on Shaw St., where he built a swimming pool in the kitchen, or the storefront on Queen St. W. opposite the mental hospital.
Cold cuts infamously served on the reclining body of a nude woman adorning the buffet table, body-painting women's bare breats, art student orgies, rich and powerful art patrons swinging on the rope from his studio ceiling.
Hodgson's sons used to drop by to meet girls because there were always women around their dad - if not the models he hired to pose nude for life drawing classes, then the dewy-eyed students he taught at the Ontario College of Art during the '70s, when mores were exploding in the name of creativity, the muse and the worship of the artist.
You can get away with it when you're also one of Canada's greatest painters, founder of the audacious Painters Eleven - the gang of abstract artists who broke the stranglehold of the Group of Seven and revolutionized the Canadian art world, at the same time as you're an Olympic athlete, marathoner, dirt-bike champ and maaster paddler winning dozens of national championships.
"Tom was a gifted person. Some people are just touched a certian way, but he was very easy about it, not full of himself," said Christopher Cutts, Hodgson's art dealer.
In 1987, when Cutts was an upstart on the art scene, a friend arranged a meeting with the artist known as a superb colourist, as well as for his style of actionpainting - arm's-length hurling, scraping, pouring oil paints on horizontal canvases on a table surface held in place by an elaborate system of blocks and tackle.
"He had a natural way of dancing on the canvas. He could make it work," Cutts said.
Hodgson's last solo show was at Cutts's gallery in 1992, the year the artist was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. This year, five days after Hodgson died of the disease - at 81 on Feb 27 - Cutts opened a major group show of abstract painters. Hodgson's piece in the show was priced at $30 000.
Hodgson and his kid sister grew in a 35 room house on Centre Island that their family rented out to tenants. Their father was an insurance broker, a convival alcoholic who threw parties at their home, known throughout the island as the Hodson house of Nonsense, according to Jane Hodgson.
"The kids all hung out at the clubhouse on the lagoon," she recalled. "All of us paddled."
But Hodgson was just that much more intense about the sport and much more skilled. When he was 12, it also was clear he was also a talented artist. He began the balancing act between art and athletics that would maintain for decades.
He trained hard, dodging the ice in Toronto's harbor, winning more than 20 Canadian solo championships. With another islander, Art Johnson, and later Bill Stephenson, he finished eighth in the tandem at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 and in ninth place four years later in Melbourne, Australia.
Hodgson married Wilma Stein, an island girl, and they moved into a house on Centre Island on a lot that extended to the lagoon, where he built a north-facing studio on stilts.
When the property of Centre Island's residents was expropriated in the late '50s, Hodgson moved to the city, becoming very successful in advertising at the same time as he was making a name for himself in the art world with Painters Eleven.
But he walked away from advertising after assessing that he had enough money to either buy a sports car or support himself as an artist for two years. When his marriage ended in 1968, his wife had to get a job to support their four kids. "His life was more important than anybody else and that was hard," said his daughter Lise Snajdr. "He wasn't a good father, but he was a good person in many ways."
"He was not the kind of dad who hugged or kissed you," said Tim Broadway, Hodgson's fifth child, born to Jeannie Broadway, an artist. They never married.
Painters Eleven offically disbanded in1959. By the 1960s and early '70s, Hodgson was a famous artist, as well as a popular teacher at the Ontario College of Art. A nudest, he hosted many parties around the indoor pool at his Shaw St. home. He never had more then three beers, but others did.
"They were orgies," said Neil Cochrane, an assistant art director at the Toronto Star who was studying at the college then. "That's what happens when you get naked art students, water and drink."
Hodgson met his second wife, Cathy Good, when she was his student. She was 19, he was 46. he and Good moved to a horse farm near Hastings, Ont., where he built a pond and paddled until 1996, when he went over a dam on the Trent River. By then, Alzheimer's had robbed him of the ability to talk in full sentences or complete a painting.
Hodgson then moved into a care facility and Good to an apartment in Warkworth. He could neither walk nor talk. Good who was devoted to him, visited him three times a day, until her unexpected death last year of an embolism.
Hodgson was saluted by friends and family at the Balmy Club last month. At one point one of his friends shouted, "Here's to Tom," then took all this clothes off(except for his socks) and ran around the whole assembly, past Hodgson's trophies and his art, before sitting down and pulling on his clothes.
"Dad would have loved it," Snajdr said. "But I think he would have preferred it have been a beautiful young woman."
Catherine Dunphy, Toronto Star
Mon, April 3, 2006
People always talk about the parties. That's what they remember about Tom Hodgson's life. They happened wherever he lived or in whatever studio he worked - be it the Pit, as it was called, at King and Church Sts., the house on Shaw St., where he built a swimming pool in the kitchen, or the storefront on Queen St. W. opposite the mental hospital.
Cold cuts infamously served on the reclining body of a nude woman adorning the buffet table, body-painting women's bare breats, art student orgies, rich and powerful art patrons swinging on the rope from his studio ceiling.
Hodgson's sons used to drop by to meet girls because there were always women around their dad - if not the models he hired to pose nude for life drawing classes, then the dewy-eyed students he taught at the Ontario College of Art during the '70s, when mores were exploding in the name of creativity, the muse and the worship of the artist.
You can get away with it when you're also one of Canada's greatest painters, founder of the audacious Painters Eleven - the gang of abstract artists who broke the stranglehold of the Group of Seven and revolutionized the Canadian art world, at the same time as you're an Olympic athlete, marathoner, dirt-bike champ and maaster paddler winning dozens of national championships.
"Tom was a gifted person. Some people are just touched a certian way, but he was very easy about it, not full of himself," said Christopher Cutts, Hodgson's art dealer.
In 1987, when Cutts was an upstart on the art scene, a friend arranged a meeting with the artist known as a superb colourist, as well as for his style of actionpainting - arm's-length hurling, scraping, pouring oil paints on horizontal canvases on a table surface held in place by an elaborate system of blocks and tackle.
"He had a natural way of dancing on the canvas. He could make it work," Cutts said.
Hodgson's last solo show was at Cutts's gallery in 1992, the year the artist was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. This year, five days after Hodgson died of the disease - at 81 on Feb 27 - Cutts opened a major group show of abstract painters. Hodgson's piece in the show was priced at $30 000.
Hodgson and his kid sister grew in a 35 room house on Centre Island that their family rented out to tenants. Their father was an insurance broker, a convival alcoholic who threw parties at their home, known throughout the island as the Hodson house of Nonsense, according to Jane Hodgson.
"The kids all hung out at the clubhouse on the lagoon," she recalled. "All of us paddled."
But Hodgson was just that much more intense about the sport and much more skilled. When he was 12, it also was clear he was also a talented artist. He began the balancing act between art and athletics that would maintain for decades.
He trained hard, dodging the ice in Toronto's harbor, winning more than 20 Canadian solo championships. With another islander, Art Johnson, and later Bill Stephenson, he finished eighth in the tandem at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 and in ninth place four years later in Melbourne, Australia.
Hodgson married Wilma Stein, an island girl, and they moved into a house on Centre Island on a lot that extended to the lagoon, where he built a north-facing studio on stilts.
When the property of Centre Island's residents was expropriated in the late '50s, Hodgson moved to the city, becoming very successful in advertising at the same time as he was making a name for himself in the art world with Painters Eleven.
But he walked away from advertising after assessing that he had enough money to either buy a sports car or support himself as an artist for two years. When his marriage ended in 1968, his wife had to get a job to support their four kids. "His life was more important than anybody else and that was hard," said his daughter Lise Snajdr. "He wasn't a good father, but he was a good person in many ways."
"He was not the kind of dad who hugged or kissed you," said Tim Broadway, Hodgson's fifth child, born to Jeannie Broadway, an artist. They never married.
Painters Eleven offically disbanded in1959. By the 1960s and early '70s, Hodgson was a famous artist, as well as a popular teacher at the Ontario College of Art. A nudest, he hosted many parties around the indoor pool at his Shaw St. home. He never had more then three beers, but others did.
"They were orgies," said Neil Cochrane, an assistant art director at the Toronto Star who was studying at the college then. "That's what happens when you get naked art students, water and drink."
Hodgson met his second wife, Cathy Good, when she was his student. She was 19, he was 46. he and Good moved to a horse farm near Hastings, Ont., where he built a pond and paddled until 1996, when he went over a dam on the Trent River. By then, Alzheimer's had robbed him of the ability to talk in full sentences or complete a painting.
Hodgson then moved into a care facility and Good to an apartment in Warkworth. He could neither walk nor talk. Good who was devoted to him, visited him three times a day, until her unexpected death last year of an embolism.
Hodgson was saluted by friends and family at the Balmy Club last month. At one point one of his friends shouted, "Here's to Tom," then took all this clothes off(except for his socks) and ran around the whole assembly, past Hodgson's trophies and his art, before sitting down and pulling on his clothes.
"Dad would have loved it," Snajdr said. "But I think he would have preferred it have been a beautiful young woman."
Catherine Dunphy, Toronto Star
Mon, April 3, 2006