"None of this was intended ever to be seen."
A new exhibition at the Penticton Art Gallery opened up this Tuesday and gives a glimpse of one man's art as he painted through the grief of losing his wife and his loneliness during the pandemic.
Liminal Space, by Richard Reid, a 93-year-old Grand Forks artist, takes centre stage in the main gallery.
Penticton Art Gallery curator Paul Crawford said he's known Reid for 35 years and during that time, had only done one show with him before.
"I wanted to do it because it was a body of work that'd probably never be seen otherwise. And I was really curious, about just what it would look like. I don't see [each] as an individual painting, I see the whole thing as one painting. It is the summation of an experience that we've all sort of had or will have," he added.
"This exhibition is sort of the summation of his life."
Reid, who has been an artist throughout his life and a museum gallery curator, decided to dive into art again in January 2020 after the passing of his wife in 2019.
"When COVID hit in March of 2020, he really suddenly went from the grieving process to, grieving, plus isolation, loneliness, the whole gamut that everybody experienced, but more intensified. Here's a guy who's 90 years old, that suddenly lost his partner of over 60 years of his life, and found himself alone and shut in and removed from his entire community," Crawford said.
"He really took seriously the idea of locking himself down in his home and, sort of moving the studio to the couch in the living room where he would've spent evenings with his wife, and would be staring across at the chair that she would have occupied, and out onto the landscape."
Crawford said when he was able to visit with Reid after Beverly passed, he started seeing this stack of paintings growing on a sideboard.
"I would ask him, 'What are your thoughts for these?' and there was no intent for them to be shown. Once he painted them, he would dutifully date each one, catalogue it, take a photograph of it, and then just put it in a pile, and that pile would grow and grow and grow. And, I've been thinking about it for a long time."
Reid handed over 464 pieces of his work for Crawford, which was nearly every painting he had done from January 2020 to July 2023.
Crawford said he took time to set them up around the gallery in chronological order and include a calendar which shows the days Reid painted, with different colours for one painting that day versus multiple.
"It's fascinating because [it's like] you're reading a book. And so you can sort of see patterns emerging of him working a theme out for maybe a week or more than a week, and then things change. The row below it might be three months removed from the row above it. And so the work above it is much different in time," Crawford added.
There are signs of grief in his paintings, with the chair his wife used to sit in empty or voids highlighted by negative spaces.
"I think there's a real vulnerability in the work here," Crawford added. "They weren't done with a sense of being precious that one day somebody's going look at these or when this would be an exhibition. They were of consequence to him in that moment, because they were the documentation of that moment in time."
It also offers a glimpse into his inner world and exemplifies the healing power of artistic expression.
Crawford said that he hopes this exhibition serves as an inspiration to other people to be creative and step into art again.
"I hope that this will serve as an interesting testament to the resilience of the human spirit. And the fact that age is a number. And it doesn't necessarily mean that because you hit an age, your contributions or your usefulness or your value, or your ability to be creative, is in any way suspended."
The exhibition runs from July 4 to Sept. 9, and Crawford will be hosting guided tours on July 26 at 7 p.m. to offer deeper insight into Reid's life and creative processes.
The tours are free to attend, but registration is required online.
