Mural man

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/07/2009 (5964 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canada Day provided a lovely mid-week break for many people, but not for Winnipeg artist Charlie Johnston.

Fresh from winning his fifth Mural of the Year Award for his tribute to the "Valour Road Three," he spent the day hanging paintings in the new Lobby on York restaurant.

He and his wife, fellow artist Sarah Johnston, had been commissioned to do six large paintings for the trendy new eatery.

"There aren’t many days when restaurants are closed," says Johnston, who has no time to rest on his laurels. "We needed to get in there."

He expects to spend most of July restoring an outdoor wall mural he finished in 1997 for Local Union 254 of the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year.

Next up is a mural for 7th Avenue Fashions, a bridal boutique on Academy Road. Meanwhile, he’s working on a commission for a bronze sculpture of Second World War hero Andrew Mynarski and a massive rock-face carving for the city of Thompson.

He is also thinking ahead to next spring when he hopes to begin a mural that will grace the outdoor wall of the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in Brandon.

"This is my life, and I love it," says Johnston, 46, who grew up in Selkirk, the youngest of 10 children in a working-class family.

"I think of what I do as a continual stream of problem solving until I reach a conclusion."

Winnipeg arguably has the most outdoor murals — more than 500 — of any major city in Canada.

Along with Tom Andrich, and the tag team of Mandy van Leeuwen and Michel Saint Hilaire, Johnston is among the most prolific and certainly the best known of the city’s mural artists.

He has produced several dozen since he gave up his full-time job with a billboard company in 2000. His 2005 mural of wildlife artist Robert Bateman’s wolf, which graces the side of an apartment complex in Thompson, is the only Canadian work in a book of world mural art from the Greek publisher Carpe Diem.

In 2002, mural promoter Bob Buchanan, who operates the encyclopedic Murals of Winnipeg website, established an annual award to recognize the best of the best.

That first year, a community-wide jury gave the award to the Welcome to Downtown mural at Higgins and Main. It was a collaboration between Johnston, van Leeuwen and Jennifer Johnson Pollock.

Johnston won the award himself the next year, then again 2004, 2007 and 2008.

"One only needs to spend a short time with Johnston to realize you’re in the presence of a creative genius whose head is exploding with ideas," Buchanan has written on his website.

Johnston, a University of Manitoba Fine Arts grad who can talk art theory with the best of them, is a rare bird on the Manitoba arts scene.

Every penny he earns is through his brush, or at least through his talented fingertips.

Even though he and Sarah support four teenagers in their St. James home, he doesn’t teach or wait tables to supplement his income.

He doesn’t work for an arts organization or apply for grants. He hustles and he relies on word of mouth. He formed a company called C5 Artworks, which stands for "Copyright Charlie Concepts Creative Company."

"He’s incredibly talented and incredibly nice," says Gloria Cardwell-Hoeppner, executive director of the West End Business Improvement Zone.

"He sees in his art what other people only hope they could see."

Adds Joe De Luca, owner of 7th Avenue Fashions: "He knows what he’s talking about. His art speaks for itself."

Mural art is an odd beast. Some people think of it as public art. To others it’s advertising or visual pollution. Many think of it simply as graffiti and even a graffiti deterrent.

"It comes down to intent and perception," Johnston says. "It can be used to sell a product and you can also create something that elevates us. You could say that Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel is the single biggest ad campaign for the Catholic Church."

As another example, he points to one of his most prominent works, the Manitoba Hydro Power Smart wall at Portage Avenue and St. James, with the two girls lying by a pristine lake under a magical sky.

"I’m sure Hydro sees it as an ad," he says. "But to me it is something else entirely. I treat the parking lot of Polo Park as a living room, and the mural is the feature canvas above the fireplace."

Johnston takes pains to point out that mural art is only one of his interests. He continues to make sculpture and to draw and paint.

He and Sarah opened a commercial gallery, the Vault, in 2006, but closed it last June.

He’d love to mount a tour of his ongoing Canadian Identity series, which includes such satiric pieces as Nellie McClung and Tommy Douglas in a Canuck version of Grant Wood’s 1930 classic American Gothic.

"I’m basically a conceptual artist," he says. "But I have the hands of a realist and the heart of an expressionist."

morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca

 

 

Here are some prominent works in Charlie Johnston’s outdoor portfolio

Welcome to Downtown

Mural of the Year 2002

Location: Dominion Bank Building, 678 Main St.

Client: Several

A collaboration with Mandy Van Leeuwen and Jennifer Johnson Pollock.

 

St. Regis Hotel, est. 1911

Mural of the Year 2003

Location: St Regis Hotel, 285 Smith St.

Client: Gil Gauthier

"I got heat stroke three times in August working on that wall."

 

Layin’ Down Tracks

Mural of the Year 2004

Location: Levy’s Leathers, 190 Disraeli Freeway

Client: Dennis Levy

This multi-wall mural, at 14,000 square feet, is the largest in Manitoba and the second largest in Canada.

 

Water Music

2004

Location: St. John’s Music, 1330 Portage Ave.

"I wanted people to feel it so that you can almost hear the rushing water as you walk by it."

 

A Film by Guy Maddin

2006

Location: Canadiana Motor Inn, 1400 Notre Dame

Johnston: "The stipulation that the mural didn’t have his portrait in it was an interesting creative challenge."

 

Manitoba Hydro Power Smart

2007

Location: 1637 Portage Ave.

Johnston: "The design of this mural had been created by the advertising agency, McKim Cringan George."

 

Jesus

Mural of the Year 2007

Location: Tabor Baptist Church, 710 Madeline St.

Johnston: "I had just finished the Manitoba Hydro mural and I was expecting to do a nice quiet mural in suburbia. I was in for a surprise."

 

Road to Valour

Mural of the Year 2008

Location: Liberty Tax Service, 1240 Ellice Ave.

Client: West End BIZ

Johnston: "The mural isn’t about acts of war, death or violence but about honouring these three men and what makes them special."

 

Source: themuralsofwinnipeg.com

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