The work of a Fort Macleod artist is part of an anniversary exhibition from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
A painting by Irene McCaugherty is in the Party On! Celebrating 50 years of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Collection exhibition that opened last week at Fort Macleod Library.
“The group exhibition . . . presents a lively grouping of work by 14 Alberta artists,” the curatorial statement reads. “Each artwork depicts a single moment of shared revelry and interconnectedness, scenes of musical performances, dancing, carnivals, community gathers and shared food and drink help mark this special occasion.”
The Alberta Foundation for the Arts has acquired work by notable Alberta artists since 1972 on behalf of the province’s residents.
“This initiative was born out of the desire to support and encourage Alberta artists by investing in their work, while simultaneously preserving an important aspect of our shared cultural history,” the curatorial statement reads.
More than 9,000 works of art are in the collection today, including paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, fibre arts, prints, photography and media art.
Fort Macleod’s Irene McCaugherty was a self-taught artist, writer and poet whose paintings explore the people and cultural narrative of southern Alberta’s pioneer days in the later part of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
“She recorded the daily happenings of life in early Alberta with humour and colour and invited viewers to enter her world of auction sales, musical rides, road building, small town life and ranching,” the exhibition brochure reads.
According to the exhibition brochure, McCaugherty often painted long and narrow, with the rectangular shape representing her view out the window of her pickup.
“Her watercolours do not conform to traditional one-point perspective, and she found a voice that was uniquely hers, capturing the imagined past and invented history of life on the prairie.”
McCaugherty created more than 1,000 paintings before she died in 1996.
Many of the paintings were donated by McCaugherty’s family to Lethbridge College and are displayed in the Founders’ Square Space.
McCaugherty for years wrote a column titled “Diary of a Farmer’s Wife” for the Lethbridge Herald, detailing cowboy life on her ranch in the Porcupine Hills.
McCaugherty self-published three books and one recording of her stories, poetry and paintings.
McCaugherty received an Alberta Achievement Award in 1992 and an honourary doctor of law degree from the University of Lethbridge in 1995.
Artworks by McCaugherty can be found in the Galt Museum and Archives in Lethbridge, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.
Other artists whose work is featured in Party On! are Carole Bondaroff, Toti, Doris Zaharichuk, Marion Nicoll, Radford Blackrider, Christopher Judge, Stan Phelps, Harriet Freidfield, Catherine Greene, Brian Dyson and Maureen Leaney.
