Errol MacDonald & Vaclav Mencik

February 12 – March 10, 2010

Studio 21 Fine Art is very pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings by artists, Errol MacDonald, and Václav Mencík.

Václav Mencík was a student at Olomouc Gymnasium in the Czech Republic.  He admired van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Cezanne, and later became interested in the Cubists - Braque & Picasso, A. Procházka, and Emil Filla.

In 1968, he was appointed Docent and, in 1983, Professor at the Academy of Applied Art in Prague - a post from which he retired 1991.  He was a founding member of the TRASA Group whom he exhibited with from 1957 to 1964, and for a short time he belonged to the RADAR group until it was disbanded by the official Union of Artists.

His work is represented in the National Gallery, Prague, the Prague Municipal Gallery, and the Municipal Galleries of Ostrava and Pardubice.

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1924, Errol MacDonald currently lives and works both in Halifax and Green Bay, Nova Scotia. He holds a Bsc, (1946) from Dalhousie University, and graduated from OCAD University, Toronto,  in 1951.

He practiced as a technician in an engineering firm from 1952 onwards, and registered as P.Eng in 1961.  Working in a consulting practice until 1992, he saw painting as a side activity at that time.  Painting has now been a full-time vocation for him since then. 

MacDonald’s paintings are very process-driven, utilizing coarse screen letterpress reproductions of photos from old newspapers as inspiration and a starting point for his works.  He takes the anachronistic imagery and collages and manipulates it until he has a satisfactory maquette for his abstract and monochromatic compositions.  Consequently, the resulting works depict imagery far removed from their original source material.  Says MacDonald, with an endearing modesty and wisdom:

“I know that what I can produce as an artist derives as much from my limitations and failings at any particular time, as from the scope of my vision.  Inspiration comes in little chunks, where inspiration can be discerned.  It is necessary that my morale be high, and it is.”