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Queen of Wands (1992). Framed 28"×32 Canadian Artist
Biography:
Canadian artist Garth Speight’s Vatican success
By Angela Bianchi
Rome – "Art functions with chaos and confusion, that’s why I live in Italy," says Garth Speight, one of Canada’s brightest and most talented painters.
At age 39, he’s captured the attention and admiration of the Canadian and Italian art community, has had two successful Biblical series, but foremost, he’s the first Canadian to have two paintings acquired by the Vatican for their modern art collection. But to achieve all this he had to leave Canada, says Speight.
"Trudeau said, if you don’t like this country, get out," he laughs. So Speight, a university arts major, hopped on a plane and came to Italy. That was 10 years ago and he has no regrets. Speight works in the fresco and gold leaf technique for his portraits and landscape paintings. His work has a Medieval-Byzantine flavour and his style resembles that of turn-of-the-century Austrian painter, Gustav Klimt, an artist Speight says, had the greatest influence on him.
Speight’s landscape paintings are brighter and richer in colour opposed to the solemness of his religious works. The reason for this, says Speight, is the advantage of working in Rome, "where colours seem brighter because of the lack of industrial pollution." The painter also suffers from eye astigmatism that makes him see objects taller and thinner than they actually are – and that’s how he paints them.
"Canadians always wait for others to give a seal of approval before they take notice, but what they don’t realise is, when a Canadian makes a name for himself abroad, he usually doesn’t go home," comments Speight. That is just his case. After years of gallery exhibitions and art shows in Canada, Speight got fed up of the stagnant Toronto art scene, with, as he puts it, "their snobbish-faddish galleries."
Speight, one of the few Canadian artists who can earn a living from his art without depending on government grants, praises the Italian art-buying public. "Italians like quality work, unlike the Americans who go for the expensive wallpaper at Piazza Navona," he says. He notes a wide gap between the European and North American cultures. “Go to a barbershop in Italy and you’ll see an oil painting on the wall. Go to one in Toronto, and you’re likely to see Miss January or the police gazette on the wall,"??? he adds. Settle in Rome with his wife and daughter, Speight is presently working on a series on Italian landscapes, “to capture them in their un-renovated state, before they loose their character," he says.
Source - https://www.angelabianchi.ca/styled-4/styled-7/#:~:text=At%20age%2039%2C%20he's%20captured,for%20their%20modern%20art%20collection.
Other information about the artist: https://www.turismoroma.it/en/node/38350
The brush smoothly slides over the canvas, the touches are fast, the colour is vivid and full-bodied. White, red, blue, gold and silver. And a lot of heart. That of Garth Speight which gives life to a triumphant nature of water lilies, irises, wildflowers, woods and birds. A wonderful garden that materializes in the 50 paintings that "knead" the soul of the Canadian artist, made of boundless landscapes, with the Roman one of Villa Torlonia and the Casina delle Civette, the small architectural jewel which extraordinary multi-colored windows interact deeply and complete the paintings on
display. Every flower, every forest, every bird is a "window" open to the explosive and colourful universe of the artist and his particular and intimate interpretation of nature that does not stop at the brushstroke, but overflows from the canvas to form a small self-sufficient world: its creation becomes one with the frame that Speight personally carves. Garth Speight has been living and working in Canada and Italy for over 40 years. His works are exhibited in private and public collections in Canada, Australia, Africa, China, USA and Europe. The exhibition is enriched by a series of educational workshops on vegetable prints for adults and children, kokedama and micro-gardens.
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