Author to profile celebrated artist’s life

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Just as Ted Harrison brought the Yukon to the rest of the world with his art, author Katherine Gibson will bring Harrison to the world with her authorized biography about the 82-year-old artist.

“It’s been a really fascinating journey,” Gibson said in an exclusive interview Thursday from Victoria.

That three-year journey has taken the author to Harrison’s birthplace in England, up to the territory, through a slew of interviews with the artist and the many people who have been a big part of his life. Gibson also scoured through the papers, documents and artwork of his life.

Though it’s an authorized biography, Gibson pointed out Harrison has essentially permitted her to do things her own way, giving her access to whatever she needed.

It was actually Harrison who suggested Gibson write the book, which has taken on the title Ted Harrison: Painting Paradise, the author recalled, noting others had asked Harrison to write his own biography.

In 2005, she interviewed Harrison for a magazine article she was writing about an upcoming exhibit of his work in Victoria.

After the story was published, she received a call from Harrison saying he had more stories he wanted to share and wondered if she’d meet him for lunch.

Her first thought was that she had already written the story, but she decided to meet him anyway.

“I wasn’t going to turn down lunch with Ted Harrison,” she said.

The two got together for the repast, with Harrison sharing more of his tales. Then as the lunch came to an end, once again, he said he had more stories to share.

He suggested Gibson might want to put them into a book. He then proposed that she write his biography, which many had already told him he should write.

“It took me about 30 seconds to decide,” Gibson commented.

Though authorized, the author is quick to note it’s not a commissioned piece, but done the same way any other book would be compiled.

“He just let me run with it,” she said.

Gibson and Harrison meet regularly, the most recent session being Thursday afternoon, with Gibson spending the past three years looking over the many items that have made up Harrison’s life.

“He and (deceased) wife Nicki kept everything,” Gibson commented.

Among some of the more intriguing items she’s discovered along the way is the tiny two-inch wide by four inch high journal the 16-year-old Harrison kept.

Told she had found the book, which was written entirely with pencil, Harrison told her she would need a magnifying glass to read it - and indeed she did.

There, she learned Harrison was constantly reading and sketching with the teenager listing off what book he was reading each week, ranging from Dracula to the works of Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.

While Harrison grew up in the working class community of Wingate, England, it’s evident he has been drawn to the more intellectual world and had a natural curiosity about the world for most of his life.

Still, the artist who has won countless awards over the years speaks the same way to high-ranking officials like the Governor General as he does to a stranger he meets on the street, Gibson said.

Along with his love of reading and sketching, Harrison’s early journal also points to the strong sense of family the teenager had as he described visits with his grandmother and long hikes he’d take with his sister and father.

The young boy’s commitment to the Boy Scouts also followed him through the years and, in 1965, he was honoured with the Boy Scouts Association of New Zealand Medal of Merit.

Visiting Harrison’s early home in Wingate, Gibson discovered Harrison really hadn’t changed much over the years.

“Ted has always been open, friendly, optimistic and incredibly intelligent,” she said. Even in grade school, she noted, teachers were asking Harrison to organize sketching trips for the class.

He’s also very stubborn, a trait Gibson credits for Harrison’s success.

Harrison paints how he wants and doesn’t particularly care what people think, she noted. That means that over the years, he wasn’t bowing to the artistic whims of the day but rather creating his own style, unlike any other current artist.

“He created his Yukon,” she said.

The colourful Yukon skies that Harrison is famous for painting only came after a time, though.

While the Harrison style may be easily-identifiable to many, his earlier works are almost “unremarkable”, Gibson said.

As she learned during her research though, when Harrison studied art at the West Hartlepool College of Art, he learned to paint in the style of the greats. Students would be shown how a particular artist painted, then do a piece in that manner.

His early works have a British style, looking very much the same as the landscape would have appeared.

In some cases, Gibson had to have Harrison look at the piece to make sure it really was him who painted it.

It was after Harrison and his family came to the Yukon in 1968 that his style began to change.

As he told Gibson, he was like a child seeing the world again.

While it would be a while before his paintings would take on the big, colourful skies, Gibson said there’s a time where Harrison begins stripping away the traditional techniques.

The works are less colourful than his later pieces, featuring more browns and greens with larger figures of people.

Slowly, Harrison began to work in larger landscapes and skies, the people becoming smaller parts of many paintings. At the time, he used a technique outlining the different parts in black, giving his work an almost stained-glass effect.

He eventually moved away from that to a style that saw the outlines disappear, but the colourful skies remain.

These days, Gibson said, he’s doing both a bit of the style he got most famous for during the height of his career in the 1980s and some folk art.

“He’s forever evolving,” she said.

Just as her research took her to England to learn about Harrison’s early life, it also brought her up to the Yukon last year to see Harrison’s home of nearly 30 years before he and Nicki moved to Victoria in 1993.

Here, she journeyed down the Yukon River as Harrison had done on two separate trips, one with the late author Pierre Berton.

She also interviewed many who had known Harrison well during his time here, including Yukon Supreme Court Justice Ron Veale and former Whitehorse mayor Flo Whyard, among others. (Harrison once drew editorial cartoons for the Star, while Whyard once edited the paper.)

It was a teaching position in Carcross that brought the Harrisons to the territory, a year after they had moved to Canada in 1967, where Harrison taught at St. Theresa School in northern Alberta.

Prior to that, they were in England, where he taught at Wingate Junior School, in the same classroom both he and his father had attended. He became art master at Dene House there.

Meanwhile, his earlier teaching career had taken him to New Zealand and Malaysia and in other parts of England after he graduated with a National Diploma in Art and an Art Teacher Diploma.

His studies were interrupted in 1945 when he went to serve in the intelligence unit of the British Army, which saw him do a three-year tour of North Africa.

Ted Harrison: Painting Paradise will be released next year as a 40th anniversary celebration of his first Yukon art exhibit, held at the Whitehorse Public Library in 1969.

While Harrison has been honoured over the years in many ways, Gibson noted there’s yet to be any Yukon artwork in the National Gallery. Harrison and others such as Jim Robb should have work in there, she believes.

With the book yet to be published, Gibson has already been pleased with the interest that’s been coming out through the pre-registration for the biography.

Two editions are planned, including a standard book and a limited collector’s edition that will include an autographed and personalized book numbered with a certificate of authenticity, images of Harrison’s most important work, a DVD of his work and a giclee (a premium reproduction format) print of the Sketching Paradise painting that will be featured on the cover.

That piece and Walking Alone, which Harrison painted following Nicki’s death, are Gibson’s favourite paintings by the artist.

While the prices still have to be set, Gibson expects the limited edition will likely be in the $250 to $260 range.

The price for the standard issue is still unknown, with Gibson still selecting which photos of Harrison’s work to include in the biography.

Those interested in purchasing a copy of either edition can pre-register by calling 1-800-663-6105 or by going to http://www.tedharrisonbiography.com.

Those who pre-register will be notified first of when the biography goes on sale, and can then decide if they want to purchase it, Gibson noted.