Men Who Paint's exhibition at the Chapel Gallery. (Facebook photo/Chapel Gallery)

By Keaton Brown

the great outdoors

Saskatchewan artist’s exhibition on display at the Chapel Gallery

Nov 5, 2019 | 2:14 PM

The Chapel gallery will be hosting four Saskatchewan artist’s exhibition that was featured in Germany last year.

53.9° North is a collection of plein air paintings that Cam Forrester, Greg Hargarten, Paul Trottier, Roger Trottier and Ken Van Rees completed during a 14-day stay in the Northern German state of Mecklenburg. They will be accompanied by paintings of Saskatchewan that share the same latitude as the paintings completed in Germany.

The four artists, who are collectively known as Men Who Paint, met at the Kenderdine Campus at Emma Lake which had an international reputation for hosting artists that dated back to the 1950s.

Greg Hargarten said the men found they shared a common interest and began painting together as a group.

“They offered summer workshops in art and in two to three years we all met up there. At the time there were not that many men that went to those things so we tended to hang together. We discovered we all liked plein air painting,” he said.

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Over the next 10 years the men organized into a group and started going on excursions away from the campus to plein air paint around the province.

Hargarten said eventually the chance to travel to Germany came up and they jumped on the opportunity.

“We went last summer and the place we went used to be at the turn of the last century, was an artist colony. So it was very similar to what we had experience at Emma Lake at the Kenderdine Campus. It also is at the same latitude as that whole Lakeland area that we used to paint in Canada. So our exhibition that is at the Chapel Gallery is named 53.9° North which is the latitude of both Schwaan Germany and the Waskesiu town site,” he said.

Hargarten said it was a great experience to compare and contrast the differences in Canadian and German wilderness. He said Canadians can sometimes take for granted how much natural beauty our country provides and their exhibition is a great testament to its wonder.

The 53.9° North exhibition will be at the Chapel Gallery in North Battleford from November 2 to December 13.

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Keaton.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow