William Kurelek’s Day Valley On A Grey Day Research Assignment

WILLIAM KURELEK’S DAY VALLEY ON A GREY DAY
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William Kurelek is a Canadian artist born in 1927 in Alberta to immigrant parents. By the time of his death in Toronto fifty years later, Kurelek was recognized as one of the most distinguished and beloved artists and an author of children content in the country. The legacy of the artist includes numerous paintings and drawings as well as books in Canada, USA, and England. The artist presents great skills and capabilities in delivering to the audience the world from his own perspective. According to Kurelek, the people are more important than the art. In this light, the people are the most distinctive features in the artist's artwork. He uses people to tell tales about how they work, play, and live. The significance of the artist in the Canadian culture is evident in how his paintings have been widely reproduced in books and children's literature. In thirty years, Kurelek developed between 2000 and 4000 artworks that presented nostalgic and nightmarish products. From a general perspective, the artist’s work offers a visual proposition that highlights the nature of a fluctuating world in his environment and the common struggles that often divide and bind the people. Insights from his bibliography and analysis show that most of Kurelek’s paintings offer a theatrical and filmic approach to communicate to the audience. In this context, his paintings offer figures that are presented in a dramatic stance that include dynamic gestures and weighted body language. Using these approaches reels the debt and appreciation the artist has for kinetic visuals of film and theatre, and the effectiveness of photographic records. Subsequently, the artist has in various pieces of art relied on inspiration from painters who used photography to develop their works. The intent of this paper is to address the inspiration of photography by the Kurelek with a focus on his work in the painting Don Valley on a Grey Day, 1972.
The art piece Don Valley on a Grey Day was created by the artist as a response and inspiration by the 401 Towards London No.1, 1968 to 1969 by Jack Chambers. The artist’s sensibility towards the use of photographic inspiration was forged early in his work as a result of his love for film that included Odd Man Out of 1947 and Portrait of Jennie of 1948 as well as The Picture of Dorian Gray of 1945. Reviews of these three films show that the protagonist is focused on finding a moral footing. These sentiments confirm the focus Kurelek had in developing his art; he was focused on communicating and intriguing the audience to think and act on various aspects that affected their livelihood. The sensibility consciously influenced his creation of the Don Valley on a Grey Day. The inspiration from photography became a critical tool to the success of Kurelek as an artist due to the capacity to offer a trusted and omnipresent pictorial aid that fostered the artist’s capability to recreate a collection of paintings that highlighted his experiences in the 1960s and 1970s. In this light, the camera was critical to his painting career because he conceived his memories in photographic approach. Subsequently, the photographs were critical to his memory because they triggered his memories to produce the best composition in the form of a painting. The use of photographs as inspiration is evident in the description by Kurelek that memory often betrays an individual. For instance, he highlights a situation where his father noticed that he had done something wrong with how a particular machine was put together in a painting. Subsequently, Kurelek valued the camera because it facilitated a creative approach with minimized mistakes and opportunity to recall the most effect accounts of the event presented in the painting. Due to such benefits, the artist began to use photography as a compositional guide for his paintings, including the Don Valley on a Grey Day.
The creativity of the artist and his focus on detail add to his aim of presenting a realistic situation with people as the key subject in the paintings. The phenomenon is evident in how the artist pays attention to detail in the Don Valley on a Grey Day, showing the daily activities, including a police officer on duty in the busy traffic. Such details can only be captured in a photograph because it has the capability to present the actual situation and how it happens in real time. Resultantly, the audience can make sense of the picture and relate to it due to the firsthand experience it can offer. The author can then develop a narrative of what happens in a particular place and the factors that influence the things the subjects experience. In the Don Valley on a Grey Day, the artists offer an incredible account that can only be offered by a photograph. Additionally, the painting intrigues the viewer to focus on the story and inspiration behind the painting to develop a comprehensive fact. The approach to this style of delivery used by Kurelek is evident in the analysis of his works that suggest that his works were developed in nature of a story, which creates a close connection with the audience and the subsequent success of the artist. Furthermore, Kur...