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31 X 37 -FRAMED AND READY TO BE HUNG
ARTIST: GORDON ROACHE 1938-2016
Like many artists, he had a day job to support a family, working at the HMC Dockyard for over 30 years, and painted throughout those years, Isaac said.
Roache found it difficult to promote himself and his work, and his wife Jovanna, a poet in her own right, became his devoted publicist.
“He didn’t like to speak about himself or talk about himself. She was really the wind beneath his wings, as they say,” Isaac said.
Jovanna Roache died in 2015. In her mother’s papers, Isaac found some of the paintings Gordon Roache created for his wife on special occasions — like the Santa he stayed up all night on Christmas Eve to create in time for Christmas Day.
“He loved her so much,” she said.
With the help of family, a big Victorian home on Lady Hammond Drive was turned into the Burning Candle Gallery.
Bigger shows followed, at places like the Lord Nelson Hotel’s Georgian Room, and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
“The invitations were collectors’ items in their own right,” Isaac recalled. “Opening night would be swamped with people.”
Roache received many commissions. He hesitated in doing faces for fear of disappointing people, she remembered.
His paintings are held in private and public collections around the world, including the National Gallery of Canada, and some of them may have a secret little something extra, Isaac said.
“When my father was putting frames on the paintings, sometimes there’d be a little gap. He’d put one of his paintbrushes inside to fill the gap, but you’d never know unless you took the painting out of the frame,” she said.
“It’s like a little treasure that you don’t know you have.”
The quiet artist had his own hardships — he was plagued for much of his life with insomnia, and often burned the midnight oil at his easel, Isaac said.
“He loved Van Gogh. I think he identified very much with Van Gogh because he struggled,” she said.
“Whenever I hear (the Don McLean song) Starry Starry Night, I think of my father.”
In 1986, Tundra Books produced Halifax ABC, a book created with a series of 26 of Roache’s paintings, showcasing his trademark style — lots of acrylics, generous brushstrokes, bright and dark colours in his early work, and more subdued tones later.
He was generous to local causes; his paintings were often donated to help raise funds for Hope Cottage and IWK.
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