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In just over three years, former Ontario Superior Court judge Kevin Whitaker has launched his new career as a painter, producing enough work to fill seven shows with his eighth set for Back Lane Studios later this year.

Through the sale of his paintings, he has raised over $120,000 for research into Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) — a Parkinson’s type illness. He has achieved this remarkable feat while experiencing the relentless progression of LBD. 

Diagnosed in 2016 with LBD, Whitaker notes: “These diseases have given me a layered perspective on how my brain and body work both together and against each other. I hope my paintings capture this tension.”

Kevin has a show, Courage, this August, 2021 at the Gillygooly Gallery in North Hatley, Quebec. 

(Check it out on his website.)

A documentary about Whitaker’s after his diagnosis ​“Chasing Monsters:​ ​Parkinson’s and the Power of Art” ​was produced by Back Lane Studios and selected as a finalist in the 10th edition of the Oaxaca Film Festival. The film was featured at the Los Angeles Awareness Festival, and the Yorkton Festival (Saskatchewan).   

Since  starting to paint about four years ago, Kevin has had seven shows:  Chasing Monsters,  Bella Ciao , and Faith (all shown at Back Lane Studios, Toronto), The Last Supper (Gillygooly, Quebec), Surveillance (Atelier | Maison, Richelieu, France), Pandemonium, (Back Lane Studios) and Courage (Gillygooly).

His November, 2021 show at Back Lane Studios will be his eighth, and his fifth at BLS!

Before taking up painting full-time in 2018, Kevin Whitaker held various public service roles including Superior Court Judge, Chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board, Special Advisor to the Ontario government on Colleges and Trades, Collective Bargaining in the College sector, reform of the Employment Standards Act and reform of the Agency and Tribunal sector. He was also a managing partner of a law firm and a Labour Arbitrator and Mediator.

Kevin’s brilliantly coloured work, charged with energy, can be viewed  on his website.

Photographs by John Bladen Bentley

If you’re interested in film photography and the process of printing images and you revel in unusual and remarkable photos, you will appreciate the photography of John Bladen Bentley.  His pop-up exhibit opened Friday, Nov. 5 , from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., and ran two weekends, Nov. 6-7 and Nov. 13-14 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Visiting during the week by appointment.)

John, who with his wife Norah Wakula moved to Hamilton because of Toronto’s high rents, uses large-format film and a painstaking printing technique called Colour Carbon Transfer. He is one of a handful of people in the world who continue to use the 19th-century process that produces the finest photographic prints. 

Some years ago, you might have seen John, walking around Roncy Village or the Junction. A tall, thin grey-haired man, he would have been carrying an old-fashioned wooden Deardorff camera and tripod, the type of apparatus you used to see in studios where the photographer would cover his head with a cloth.

 A short documentary explaining John’s aesthetic and process was produced by Paul  Kutasi some eight years ago for a Contact Photography Festival exhibit at the Revue Cinema. With his discerning eye,  John looks for things no one else notices, ephemeral beauty in unexpected places — the texture of weathered wood and peeling paint, the pattern of wires looping across the sky, a crumpled piece of paper on concrete.  Once he has captured an image,  John begins the laborious five-day task of developing the film, producing colour separations and then printing

While John now uses a smaller large-format film camera that’s lighter to carry, he continues on his mission, looking for the unexpected and ephemeral in his environment and teaching us to look at what’s us in new ways.

Here are some articles about John’s work: 

The Hamilton Spectator: The Magic of Colour Carbon Transfer Printing

Harrowsmith Magazine: The Last Colour Carbon Transfer Printer in Canada

Silvershotz Vol. 7: Double Transfer Colour Carbon Printing Process

View more images here.

A Home-grown Talent: Miriam Tingle

Back Lane is pleased to have offered a debut exhibit of paintings and prints by Miriam Tingle, 25. who grew up on Howard Park Ave. and attended Parkdale Collegiate. Her exhibit of recent works continued until Dec. 20, 2019. Her paintings are beautiful. She has created a series featuring mountains, washed with mist, snow and ice. You can smell the air and feel the serenity. There are many red stickers on the wall! Miriam, who studied business management at Ryerson,  has also created some abstract floral paintings, and a number of images of characteristic homes in Toronto neighbourhoods.  

Miriam Tingle takes on the world with her debut show at Back Lane Studios!  It runs until Friday, Dec. 20. 

Bella Ciao: Another Show by Kevin Whitaker

Kevin Whitaker worked unbelievably hard, painting a new series of canvases for his  exhibit  Bella Ciao: The World is Too Much with Us.

The title refers to the song Goodbye Beautiful, recently performed by Tom Waits, and the sonnet by William Wordsworth.

Proceeds from Kevin’s exhibit sent to Parkinson’s research. Preceding the show’s opening was a a screening at the Revue Cinema of a documentary about Kevin, his art and how it has helped him cope with Lewy Body Disease, a form of Parkinson’s.  Read more about the event here and watch the documentary by clicking here. 

Kevin Whitaker, who took up painting after a career as a lawyer and judge, was inspired by a Tom Waits song, a Wordsworth sonnet and the Bayeux Tapestry for his new exhibit.

Remnants, Layers, Threads

“Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.”   — Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook

Ann Holmes has more than four decades of notebooks, collections of ephemera, thoughts and memories. Her exhibit allows visitors to wander through and dip her hanging journals.

Ann Holmes began keeping personal journals during her time studying art at Fanshawe College – and she never stopped. Over the years this process has resulted in the creation of over 80 notebooks filled with a variety of writing, drawing and collage. Remnants, Layers, Threads is a retrospective look at these years of diaristic writing and collecting. The installation comprises completed books as well as new work. It takes place at Back Lane Studios, Nov. 16-25, 2018. 

For Holmes these notebooks serve as a space for reflection, refuge, and tracking changes she has observed in herself over time. By presenting them to others, they transform from records of one person’s life into a symbol for all humans’ desire to document experiences. They are an important space to preserve thoughts without censorship and so they become methods for returning to our past and rediscovering who we were, where we went and what we felt.

While there is no single answer to the question “why do I write” Remnants, Layers, Threads demonstrates how process or practice in itself may be valuable. With these notebooks Holmes invites you to look at who she has been throughout

her life and in turn to remember yourselves.

— Ciar O’Mahony

Art Show on Roncy Rocks weekend

Jennifer Joiner has explored grids in her paintings. A selection of her work will be on display at Back Lane Studios during Roncy Rocks, June 9, 2018.

Student photos on display  

Saturdays and Sundays in May, 20

Drop by the studio Saturdays and Sundays in May between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. to see photographs taken by children, ages 9-13. They have participated in workshops provided by Back Lane Studios during the summer, on PA days and in a program at Kensington Community School.  The photos were taken either in Kensington Market or around Roncesvalles. The exhibit is part of the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival.

Read about this show in a Toronto.com article by Ruhal Gupta.

Exhibit  raises $20,000 for Parkinson’s research  

Former judge embraces art to cope with devastating disease

Kevin Whitaker’s exhibit, Chasing Monsters, of paintings at Back Lane Studios for three weekends in April, 2018, helped raise $20,000 for Parkinson’s Disease research.  Most of the donations were made through the Sunnybrook Foundation website  and Toronto General Western.  

The show was well-attended. Mayor JohnTory, former mayor David Miller, MP Arif Virani and Police Chief Mark Saunders all came to see Kevin’s exhibit.

A  former Ontario Superior Court judge,  he took up his paintbrush after being diagnosed with LBD, an atypical form of Parkinson’s that progresses rapidly and affects cognition.

Globe & Mail reporter Brad Wheeler interviewed Kevin about his art.  Matt Galloway interviewed Kevin on Metro Morning. CBC Toronto also ran a short television doc about the exhibit. Here’s an article in the Toronto Observer about Kevin and his exhibit by Centennial journalism student  Varsha Ramdihol.

The High Park resident has embraced art as a way to cope with the devastating diagnosis several years ago. He is expected to live only five to eight years.

“I am now finding pleasure and purpose through a renewed focus on painting,” he writes. “This series captures the intensity of my daily life: hallucinations, erratic memory and generalized physical discomfort.”

He has also found painting has helped him manage the hallucinations, which have disappeared significantly since he put his brush to canvas. “The exhibit title Chasing Monsters was especially relevant,” he says.

The show was curated by artist Connie van Rijn, a long-time friend of Kevin and his wife Marie Moliner. “Kevin’s paintings are striking, their power is in their authenticity,” she says. “They capture and express what it is to be human . . . pain, bewilderment, humour.  They stay with me and change the way I perceive things, in the way true art does.”

All proceeds from the exhibit will be donated to Parkinson’s research. Visit this Sunnybrook Foundation fundraising page . 

For Whitaker, the exhibit represents “an important point in my life where I am able to say publicly some of the things that are expressed in these paintings and to share my story.”