North Lake, Prince Edward Island
Gareth: "The landscape of North Lake, Prince Edward Island is my most important inspiration. I go there every summer and feel a very deep connection to this place. There is something very special --even archetypal -- about the fields, skies, grasses, red earth, rolling hills and storms of PEI. When I paint that landscape it speaks about something beyond the particularity of the place itself. It inspired the majority of the small "Lament" paintings and my current body of work Deep Field.
Photos by Gareth Bate, North Lake, Prince Edward Island.
Allegri's Miserere
Gareth: "Gregorio Alegri's Miserere is the most beautiful and inspiring piece of music I've ever heard. My greatest aspiration is to make an artwork that can do that. I especially love the version Miserere a nove voci, baroque version with ornamentations by Bernard Fabre-Garrus. The piece was originally performed during holy week in the Sistine Chapel since 1514. Although I am totally non-religious I often find the aspirations of religious music and art very inspiring."
Video: Nice version by Boys Air Choir directed by Connor Burrowes.
Toronto Neighbourhoods
Gareth: "I have a great love of Toronto's neighbourhoods. They are lively, unique and diverse. Toronto is a city best experienced on foot. It works brilliantly in so many ways and has massive potential. My favourite neighbourhoods include the Annex, Queen West West, Kensington Market, Spadina & China Town, Bloor West and the Danforth. I have no tolerance for Toronto haters."
Photos by Gareth Bate: Kensington Market, China Town. Toronto.
Breugel's The Harvesters
Gareth: "On my first visit in 2004 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York I was floored when I came across Breugel's The Harvesters. It is my favourite painting. I found it incredibly moving and beautiful. It is the kind of painting that must be seen in person. The composition is remarkable. I realized at that moment that I wanted to make paintings that made people stop, paintings that were silent and filled with a serene quality. I don't think I actually do that, but it is an aspiration."
Chinese Painting
Gareth: "On my second trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York I discovered Chinese painting for the first time. It blew my mind. I was struck by its power through simplicity, incredible depth and resonance, and by the fascinating shifting perspectives. I am particularly attracted to Sung Dynasty painting and handscrolls. The shifting perspectives of Chinese painting inspired my painting "Orange Walking for Miles."The use of "voids" continually resurfaces in my work. This is especially true in my latest work Deep Field.
Andy Goldsworthy, Earth Art
Gareth: "If there is an artist I wish I could be it would be Andy Goldsworthy. I would love to live that kind of life with a real connection to nature. But at the moment I have no idea how that could happen. The documentary about him called Rivers & Tides is incredibly beautiful and inspiring. I am especially attracted to the idea of making work outside in nature as opposed to the studio."
Video: Scene from Andy Goldsworthy: Rivers & Tides.
Pale Blue Dot: Carl Sagan
Gareth: This famous speech sums up a lot about how I feel about the world. Let's get some perspective!
Sagan: “Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam”
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field
Gareth: "This has been called the most important photograph ever taken, and I would agree. For 18 days the Hubble Space Telescope shot a single long exposure of a patch of sky that appeared to be completely empty. The result is incredible.
This is not a photograph of stars, everyone of those points of light is an entire galaxy! Each one is composed of millions of stars just like our own. This photograph blows my mind. It is so impossible to grasp. It makes our often assumed uniqueness in the universe seem absurd. This photo is the principle inspiration for my series Deep Field.
Grenadier Pond, Toronto
Gareth: "Toronto's High Park is home to one of the most beautiful places in the city, Grenadier Pond. This pond inspired much of the "Lament" paintings series and is the location for my photographs Winter on Grenadier Pond and plastic painting Self-Portrait Installation. It is a location I continually return to for inspiration.
Photos: Gareth Bate, 2008
John Brown, Painter
Gareth: "John Brown is a very well known Toronto painter and also a friend of mine. He was my neighbour at 401 Richmond. We frequently have very interesting conversations (rants) about art and politics. I admire his dedication. It is fascinating to watch the process of these paintings unfold over many months. It is a dramatically different approach to painting than my own.
Photo: Copyright John Brown, 2008
In The Mood For Love
Gareth: "I think this is possibly one of the all-time greatest moments in film. This film is so unbelievably beautiful and moving. The music is also fabulous."
Video: In the Mood for Love by Wang Kar-wai. Starring Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung. Music by Shigeru Umebayashi and Michael Galasso.
Christo & Jeanne-Claude
Gareth: "I was lucky to visit Christo & Jeanne-Claude's The Gates Central Park in 2004. It was an amazing experience that I will never forget. A profound gift. It was like walking around inside a giant painting. On the second day I was there we had a blizzard and Central Park was blanketed in snow. That was The Gates at its best. It inspired my painting Orange Walking for Miles."
401 Richmond St. West, Toronto
Gareth: "I first arrived at 401 Richmond as the recipient of the "401 Richmond Career-Launcher Prize" a 500 square foot studio for one year. I have fallen in love with the building and find it truly visionary. This is Toronto at its best. The roof top garden and stunning court yard are secret, (yet public) Toronto gems. The building is based on urban ecologist Jane Jacobs philosophy of "New ideas require old spaces" and the need for mixed use and diversity. This old industrial building has been transformed into a vibrant home for artists studios, galleries, film festivals, charities, magazines, tailors, architects, theatre groups, book stores and design firms etc. It also has a wonderful cafe. I highly recommend a visit."
Charles Darwin & Evolution
Gareth: "If I have a hero it is Charles Darwin. Evolution is the single greatest idea that any human has ever had. It changes everything. I find evolution infinitely fascinating. I would love to make art about evolution but I have no idea what that would look like."
Darwin: "There is grandeur in this view of life... whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
Sigur Ros
Gareth: "I want to go to Iceland! I find Sigur Ros captures in music some of the emotional spirit I hope to eventually achieve in my paintings."
Song: Glósóli (not the real video)
Joan Baez, Singer/Activist
Gareth: I was lucky enough to see Joan Baez live at Toronto's Convocation Hall on the day after the start of the Iraq War. I had just come from the massive protests downtown. She walked out and immediately sang "We Shall Overcome". It was an amazing moment. Joan Baez back in her element.
Video: Diamonds and Rust
John Hartman's City Paintings
Gareth: Canadian artist John Hartman's city painting really capture my imagination. He flies over cities around the world and creates fabulously expressive paintings. I especially love the watercolour preparatory sketches.
Photo: Copyright John Hartman, Montreal & Vancouver
Toronto Streetcars
Gareth: "Nothing beats a trip on Toronto's Queen Street or Spadina Streetcars. They are the most iconic thing about Toronto. Sure, rush hour isn't fun, but other than walking there is no better way to see the city than to ride all the way from the west end to the beaches on the Queen car. Sadly in a few years they will be phased out in favour of light rail transit (which will be great) but it will be sad to see the end of Toronto's streetcars.
Photos by Gareth Bate
Tom Thompson's Sketches
Gareth: "Canadian pre-Group of Seven painter Tom Thompson's sketches of Algonquin Park are a marvel. They are remarkably vibrant and evocative. He is the best of the bunch. It is nice to see the Art Gallery of Ontario put their sketches front and centre where they belong. Something is always lost when they scale up for their studio paintings.
Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipses
Gareth: "The experience of being inside Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipses at the DIA: Beacon, in New York state had a profound influence on me. It was the closest I have come to a sublime experience. The sound in the room echoes and gives the sense that these gigantic steel structures are about to collapse. It was incredible powerful to surrender to the fear and embrace it. A very moving experience."
Janis Joplin
Gareth: "Take another little piece of my heart. --I would love to make paintings with the raw emotion and passion of Janis Joplin. What would that look like?"
Get is while you can, cause you may not be here tomorrow.
Video: Piece of My Heart
Vincent Van Gogh
Gareth: "What an amazing painter. Every time I see a Van Gogh painting I am deeply moved. Every brush stroke has an intense sense of spiritual purpose."
Image: Starry Night: Van Gogh, MoMa, New York.
The Trevi Fountain Scene in
La Dolce Vita
Gareth: "This is another one of my all-time favourite film moments. So amazing."
Video: La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini. Starring Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg, 1960.
The Lion in Winter
Gareth: "In my first year as an art student I saw the film "The Lion in Winter". It was a revelation to see "Eleanor's Arrival". I was struck by the remarkable beauty of the brown and gray colour scheme. I had never seen brown as beautiful before and this was an awakening to a more sophisticated sense of colour. The music is also amazing in this film."
Video: Eleanor's Arrival in The Lion in Winter. Starring Katharin Hepburn. Music by John Barry.
BBC's North & South
Gareth: "I love BBC literary adaptations. North & South is in my opinion the all-time greatest one. This scene is so perfect.
I also highly recommend Bleak House (2005), Sense & Sensibility (2008), Pride & Predjudice (1980), Our Mutual Friend (1998) and the original Forsythe Sage (1967)."
Video: North & South: Directed by Brian Perciva., Staring Daniela Denby-Ashe and Richard Armitage. Music by Martin Phipps.
Ann Hamilton, Installation Artist
Ann Hamilton writes in Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art: "Sometimes something else is too much, still overloaded with intellectual attachments. Sometimes is it too subtle to come into presence. Sometimes I wonder how little one can allow oneself to do our impetus “to do” gets in the way of our listening to what is necessary, our impetus “to say” barging in front of listening. I wonder if this emptying out means leaving…or preparing for something else. And might I recognize what that something else is…or will I be too afraid too leave form? When we are confronted with work that is not an object with fixed edges and form but a work which is the experience of our body as it inhabits space, it is very difficult for us from a Western philosophical tradition to see reality as made up of something that is not, in some way, an object…for us to recognize presence, absence, or emptiness as something.
Toronto Super-Build Project
Gareth: "Over the last few years all of Toronto's cultural institutions have been transformed. I have found watching the construction of these buildings very inspiring. My favourites include OCAD's "table top" on coloured stilts, the new Art Gallery of Ontario and the interior of the new Opera House. Thank god it happened before the Great Recession!
Photos by Gareth Bate: Frank Gehry's Art Gallery of Ontario interior, Will Alsop's Ontario College of Art & Design, Daniel Liebeskind's Royal Ontario Museum, AGO exterior, ROM interior.
Ed Burtinsky, Photographer
Gareth: "Canadian photographer Ed Burtinsky's photos are haunting, beautiful and incredibly disturbing. The contrast between the experience of the beauty of his images and the devastation they depict is really striking."
Photo: Australia copyright Ed Burtinsky.
Richard Dawkins
Gareth: "I find Richard Dawkins' writing about Science and Atheism very compelling. I would recommend the The God Delusion and The Ancestors Tale." Dawkins writes in The God Delusion: "Human thoughts and emotions emerge from exceedingly complex interconnections of physical entities within the brain. An atheist in this sense of philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles – except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don’t yet understand. If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world, as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural. As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful."
Whistler's Drawings
Gareth: "Whistler's drawings of Venice are remarkable. My first experience of them was the fabulous "Turner, Whistler, Monet" exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The simplicity and restraint is truly inspirational."
Canadian Song Writers:
Leonard Cohen
Gareth: There is something very special about Canadian song writers. There is a distinct emotional rawness that I really admire.
Song: Chelsea Hotel #2
Canadian Song Writers:
Jane Siberry
Gareth: "Another great Canadian song writer is Jane Siberry or "ESSA" as she is now called. She has written some truly beautiful songs and I think is undervalued."
Song: Love Is Everything
Canadian Song Writers:
Joni Mitchell
Song: A Case of You
Canadian Song Writers:
Neil Young
Song: Journey Through The Past.