Mountains, fields, barns, and especially horses figure prominently in his work. He paints in nature, and has nature in his pocket.
I’m talking to artist Stuart Main in the Cookshire-Eaton Art Gallery, where he and his colleagues Chantal Julien and Pauline Boudreau are wrapping up a three-person exhibition. They’ve been painting together for 25 years, more or less.
“He has a horse in his pocket,” jokes Julien. Indeed, Main confirms, “horses don’t do what you want them to do. I find it’s much better to just make them up.”
But then he’s had quite a few years of experience painting them. He recently had his 90th birthday, and he had an early start as an artist.
When he was five years old, his father, Cecil, age 29, died of tuberculosis. Stuart had TB too, first in his lungs, then his hip. “The doctors fused my hipbone so I could walk.” He flourishes his cane.
In those days, TB was not easily treated, and he spent eight years in the Montreal Children’s Hospital. “I started doing artwork in the hospital because there was nothing else to do. If it weren’t for that, I’d probably be a great athlete instead of a so-so artist,” he laughs.
Julien scoffs. She finds that statement excessively modest, as would many others.
After a 30-year career as an illustrator in Montreal, using a wide range of styles, Main began painting landscapes in 1975. A two-inch-thick book created by his daughter Wendy displays some 100 of the more than 2000 works he’s painted. His work is available online. Artmagazine.ca features Main’s art among that of only five artists. It’s at Canadianclassicfineart.com and Galeriedartyvondesgagnes.com, too.
Main paints mostly outdoors, in oils. His works measure less than 16 by 20 inches, but are solid in stature. His brushwork is deft and painterly, blending colours, sculpting forms rather than sketching lines. A lone horse often provides a focal point in his landscapes.
Some 10 times a year, he goes out on day-long painting forays with Julien and Boudreau. They leave at 9 a.m. and come home at about 3:30 p.m. He has taken painting trips to the Charlevoix and other regions, but these days he frequents the Stoke mountains.
“Sometimes it takes longer to find a landscape than to paint it,” he says. “Often we’ll go back to the same place, but it’s never the same. It’s different seasons, different lighting, a different time of day.”
Main is a painter for all seasons. “I like them all,” he says. “But winter is easiest.”
I ask him about painting greenery. “Everything is so green here. Whatever shall I paint?” Georgia O’Keefe once said about upstate New York.
“Yes, May and June can be tough to paint, because everything is so green,” he admits. “But it does simplify things. I like green.”
A native of East Angus, in 1972 Main returned to the Townships with his wife Violet Bennett and their three children. They bought a farm in Bishopton, where they still live, and he continues to paint.
“I’ve had a few hitches along the way,” he summed up,” but I’ve been very fortunate my whole life.”
