gerald ferguson

1930-2009


Gerald Ferguson was a conceptual artist and painter who lived and taught in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Born in Cincinnati he was both a Canadian and US citizen.After receiving his MFA from Ohio University Ferguson taught at two institutions before coming to Canada in 1968, invited to teach at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) in Halifax. He continued to teach at NSCAD until his retirement in 2006.


He developed his conceptual approach to painting, focused on task and process. Importantly, Ferguson helped establish NSCAD as an important international centre for conceptual art. Critic Gary Michael Dault describes Ferguson's teaching at NSCAD as a "37-year trajectory...wherein he stubbornly, persuasively tilled the fields of the kind of conceptual art for which the college became primarily known."

His work is represented in numerous public and private collections in Canada, the US and Europe. Ferguson has had solo exhibitions at Dalhousie Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, Vancouver Art Gallery, Winnipeg Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada. Ferguson has work in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum Sztuki, in Lódź, Poland.

This is one of Ferguson’s Maintenance Paintings. A series of small works produced in 1979. The label on the reverse reads:

“Maintenance Painting No. 60. A series of paintings in a variety of sizes and colours on standard supports using latex paint, installed in a reasonable manner and whose reinstallation and maintenance (re-painting) is at the discretion of the end-user.” Gerald Ferguson 1979.

 

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