An Arts & Culture Council Presents event! This is a free event, but registration is required.
Join us for an insightful presentation featuring the life and work of Canadian landscape and wildlife artist Harvey Bodach, who has gained national and international recognition through numerous awards. Harvey draws inspiration from Creation, using a realist style to express his observations in art form. We will explore his fascinating journey as an artist and the process behind his artwork.
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Harvey Bodach
Harvey Bodach was born in 1955 and grew up as the eldest son in a family of five, living in a three-story house on the edge of High Park in the City of Toronto. Creative and self-motivated, his early years set the patterns for life later: creating two- and three-dimensional objects in art, exploring Canada’s great wilderness areas, walking through museums and galleries of Europe, and participating in vigorous sports activities like hockey - passions which have been and remain an interest for his life today.
Education took Harvey through challenging and stimulating careers in art. After completing undergraduate studies in 1979, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts honours degree, he spent 19 years in the commercial arts industry as a graphic designer, illustrator and art director, including six years as a part-time freelance artist. Post graduate studies completed in 1996 with a Bachelor of Education degree was followed by 24 years in education teaching high school students visual arts, multi-media technologies and photography. Harvey retired from teaching in 2019 and two years later, he registered “Harvey Bodach – Artist” as a business.
Since then, he has won four national art competitions as an active member of the Federation of Canadian Artists, completed two solo exhibitions, been highlighted at a major Arts Festival in eastern Ontario, and been published in two major magazines and an art book.
Harvey works with a number of mediums on both two- and three-dimensional surfaces, painting with acrylics and oil-based paints. By using masonite boards and applying multiple gesso grounds, which he prepares himself, he finishes the surface by sanding them toward a smooth finish. This offers greater technical control when painting in a realism style. Each composition has underlying abstract forms and structures. Elements within are orchestrated so that the viewer’s eye can flow toward important areas and linger there. The hope is to recreate in art form a similar experience found only in the field of both the landscape and its wildlife.
“We exist in an expanding universe of countless galaxies, stars and planets moving in space and time. We also live and move on one of those planets called Earth, where life thrives and seems to stand out from all the rest.
My mind is challenged to understand and explore this unique world, its expansive nature, with all its complexity, mystery and revelation.
As I look around this creation, it testifies of a Divine hand - a Creator who has left a visible record. This is found written upon the predictable paths of the myriad heavenly bodies above, the deeply scarred surfaces and sediments of earth below, the DNA codes within all of reproductive life and in the crowning form and spirit of humanity itself.
I need to observe, encounter, and comprehend this wisdom reflected in creation, discover its meaning, purpose and direction.
My desire as an artist is to interpret my observations and express this understanding by recapturing it in art form. With a visual language, through multiple mediums, in drawings, paintings and sculptures, and by using a realistic style, this art will represent a growing artistic record of my experiences.” – Harvey Bodach