C l  i v e   P o w s e y /  D r a w / P r i n t / P a i n t

About

C l i v e  P o w s e y, v i s u a l   a r t i s t,  1 9 7 6 - 2 0 2 4

 

I was born in Ashford, Kent, U.K., 1958, and trained in drawing, painting and printmaking in Fine Arts at The Ontario College of Art, spending the fourth and final year in an off-campus program in Florence, Italy.

I exhibited regularly in public and commercial galleries beginning in 1981. Group exhibitions included International Waters (1991) with members of the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour, the American Watercolour Society, and The Royal Watercolour Society. The show travelled to Toronto, New York and London. My watercolours won awards, including the D.L. Stevenson Award for Excellence (2009) at the CSPWC annual Open Waters exhibition, and Best Watercolour (1999) at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition.


I worked in animated film and television for large companies such as Nelvana Ltd. and Walt Disney Animation Canada and also freelance for small studios such as Chuck Gammage Animation, The Animation House, and Red Rover Studios. 

I worked sporadically as an art instructor for courses and workshops. I taught courses in drawing and painting at the Ontario College of Art (1988-92), and background painting and design at Max the Mutt Animation School (1999-2003) in Toronto. In later years I taught courses in drawing and rendering and design fundamentals in the Metal Jewelry Design Certificate Program at North Island College in Campbell River BC and various courses in painting at Lupine Studio in Courtenay BC.

I attended art college at a time when deciding to become a visual artist was a path less traveled and required an irrational passion, perversity, stupidity, recklessness and a willingness to avoid life's more favorable and lucrative outcomes, for example, becoming an art teacher. I nevertheless received from the art college a first, and significant, installment in the skills required to be a working visual artist. I was fortunate to live at a time when the results of a years-long training were still a recognized 'commodity currency' of demonstrable applicable skill, distinct from the contemporary 'fiat currency' of academic credentials that are now required. Attending an art college felt comfortable for my working class background and I had the good fortune to enjoy several decades as a working artist, both fine and applied.

During my art training the describing of form through drawing was held in high esteem and still a lingua franca for the visual arts. Vast tracts of a student's time at school were devoted to the task of becoming a delineator of rare skill. I still hold the ability to draw as a paramount skill for the fullest comprehension of the visual world, for connecting the eye, the mind and the hand, for discovering and storing inventories of visual templates that can be conjured and recognized during image making.

At the end of a working life I've organized and edited this website accordingly, creating a few portfolios of work that I still find fairly competent and in some way representative in terms of content. I have a small press and continue to make intaglio prints some of which will be added occasionally.

Clive Powsey, 2024

To view a selected c.v. click  here.

 

@psychotopographer