Article published February 5, 2025 on the Glenbow's blog.
One of the most exciting initiatives at Glenbow is accessioning new works into the collection. Today we’re thrilled to be sharing stories of two paintings we recently acquired!
Glenbow’s art collection encompasses an enormous array of artworks, from paintings and sculptures to installations and video works. Yet as wide-ranging as the collection is, it is a priority for the museum to continue to develop and build it. One important area is contemporary art from this place, and in December 2024 we acquired two paintings by Calgary artists: The Protagonist by Marcia Harris and Closing In by Nick Rooney. Both were generously donated by local collector Tony Hailu. In discussing the gift, Hailu noted, “These works reflect fresh and contemporary twists on landscape and still life art that celebrates the local roots of these artists. Nick’s Closing In is his first large scale painting tacking still life with geometric abstraction. Marcia’s The Protagonist is the first of her paintings that combine her love of portraiture with the interior of the urban spaces she is known for painting the exteriors of. Both works are important milestones of the artists’ continued growth and celebration of the Alberta they depict.”
Marcia Harris, The Protagonist, 2023, Collection of Glenbow. Gift of Tony Hailu, 2024.
The Protagonist marks a turning point in Harris’s practice. In recent years, she created a series of paintings offering poetic representations of older buildings in Calgary — but always seen from the outside. With The Protagonist, she takes viewers inside the Deer Head Café, a diner in Northeast Calgary that is over 50 years old.
As Harris explains, “After being an outsider for so long, it felt like a natural progression to visit the buildings’ interiors. I was curious as to what inspiration might unfold if I engaged with the inside space. Perhaps I would uncover a relationship that could connect the seemingly unapproachable face of the outside walls with the welcoming interior hidden behind those doors. I decided then to start with a building I had frequently painted over the years.”
The Protagonist is a meditation on the urban scene in Calgary, as experienced in 2023, and it is part of a long history of artists exploring our city. For decades, painters have been responding to Calgary in their art, exploring everything from notable places to community life, and with Harris’s work this artistic history has a new chapter.
Nick Rooney, Closing In, 2022, Collection of Glenbow. Gift of Tony Hailu, 2024.
With Closing In, Nick Rooney addresses the contemporary significance of an even older art history: the genre of still life painting. For centuries, artists have been inspired by foods and flowers, dishes and objects, and the meanings they can convey, especially when arranged in striking juxtapositions.
In commenting on his painting, Rooney notes, “My compositions are inspired by the Dutch Golden Age and painters like Pieter Claesz, who often placed objects and fruit carefully over an edge to demonstrate a delicate balance and foreshadow a potential collapse, as well as contemporary still-life painters like John Hall, whose use of light places fruit in a center stage-like spotlight. The painting Closing In was created to dramatically depict a sense of weight […] the shape compresses the fruit and becomes a way to explore and express my research on the history of painted still lifes, climate change, wealth distribution, and the mounting pressure to feed a growing population.”
Drawing on a global art history that has long been an important source of inspiration to artists in Calgary, Closing In speaks to some of the most urgent questions of the early 21st century.
https://www.glenbow.org/blog/collections-feature-recent-acquisitions-for-glenbows-art-collection/
