Framed: Vanitas is based on a painting by Pieter Gerritsz van Roestraten (1630 – 1700), a Dutch painter of still-lifes, including vanitas still-lifes (see below). Vanitas is the Latin for vanity, and in art, it refers to a genre of still-life painting that flourished in the Netherlands in the 17th century. A vanitas painting portrays collections of objects symbolic of the certainty of death. Although my painting has been painted to look as though it could have been rendered in the late 17th century, when van Roestraten painted his, it has several references to the 20th and 21st centuries: Van Roestraten's silver vase has been replaced with a ceramic vessel I made in the 1960s and the rose in the vessel is from a family funeral from the early 2000s, his book is open to a page showing a laughing Democritus with the inscription "Everyone is sick from birth / vanity is ruining the world" that has been replaced with a photo of me dated 2015, his pocket watch has been replaced with a snuffed out tea candle, and the brass nameplate on my "frame" is dated 2024. My painting is roughly the 'same size as van Roestraten's, though the format has been changed from rectangular to square.

 

—John Hall, February 2024

 

Pieter Gerritsz van Roestraten (1630 – 1700) 
A Vanitas, circa 1666 – 1700
oil on canvas, 30" x 25"
Royal Collection Trust, Hampton Court Palace

 

John Hall  was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1943. Spanning nearly 60 years, Hall's career commenced with his 1965 graduation from the Alberta College of Art (ACA, now Alberta University of the Arts) and a year in 1966 at Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

 

At the ACA Hall was taught by notable instructors including Illingworth Kerr and Marion Nicoll. During his undergraduate studies there, Ron Spicket introduced Hall to the relatively new medium of acrylic paint. Though most Realist painters work in oil, Hall was determined to paint Realist still-lifes in acrylic. He forged ahead and developed his own unique method for the medium. Over the years he has integrated the us of airbrushing to overcome the difficulties of creating subtle gradations of light and colour when using fast drying acrylic paint.

 

Hall’s mastery of the acrylic medium makes his paintings easily recognisable—highly realistic yet lacking any indication of the artist’s hand. Throughout his career he has devoted himself almost exclusively to painting still-lifes that feature everyday objects, with a particular emphasis on how the fall of light can transform materials, surfaces, and colours.

 

John Hall rose to national prominence during the 1970s with his large, hyper-realist still-life paintings. Today, Hall continues his exploration of familiar objects and light, documenting their appearances with meticulous detail. He is also reflecting upon his long career by revisiting paintings, narratives, and themse that have surfaced in decades past.

 

Professor of painting and drawing from 1971 to 1997 at the University of Calgary, Hall was awarded Professor Emeritus status in 1998. He also held academic positions at the Ohio Wesleyan University (1969 – 1970), the Alberta College of Art (1970 – 1971) and at the Okanagan University College in Kelowna (2003 – 2004). Hall was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1975 and in 1979 spent a year in New York working at the Canada Council’s PS1 studio. For a decade during the 1990s he and his wife Joice (also an accomplished painter) lived and worked in San Miguel, Mexico for part of each year.

 

Over the course of his career, John Hall has exhibited widely in Canada and internationally. Notable amongst his numerous solo exhibitions are John Hall: Paintings and Auxiliary Works at the National Gallery of Canada which toured nationally in 1979 – 1980, and in 1993 a major retrospective, John Hall: Traza de Evidencia at Mexico City’s Museo de Arte Moderno. In 2016 to 2017, another major retrospective, Travelling Light: A forty-five year survey of paintings was shown both at the Kelowna Art Gallery and the Nickle Galleries in Calgary.

 

Hall’s work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Art Gallery of Alberta, Canada Council Art Bank, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, amongst many others.

 

John Hall’s contributions both through the creation of his own artwork and through his legacy as a professor of fine art are undeniable. He holds an important place in the history of the visual arts in Calgary, and across Canada. John Hall currently lives and works in Kelowna, British Columbia.