Group Exhibition of Thielsen Gallery artists featuring:

Antje Laidler – Recent Charcoal Drawings

Thielsen Gallery, 1038 Adelaide Street North, Tel: 519 434-7681

Show runs from July 22-August 20, 2010

Antje Laidler was born in Schwerin, Germany, in 1943, the year the Germans were defeated in the Battle of Stalingrad – the point in time many historians believe reversed the fortunes of the great Nazi war machine. Schwerin is a lush city about one hour south of Hamburg in what was once East Germany. It was one of the few German cities not flattened by Allied bombs.

However, Laidler and her family moved to Koln (Cologne) in West Germany after the war – a city famed for its Gothic, medieval cathedral that was devastated and virtually emptied in wartime from 800,000 people to 40,000 by June 1945. Laidler’s family, like many others, helped to rebuild the city brick by brick. “There was total devastation,” says Laidler flatly. “Nothing worked.”

In those days she longed to study fashion design. But that plan was nixed by her parents as too impractical. But her father’s sister owned an art gallery and fashion store in Berkeley, California. So in 1963, after submitting a photo to her aunt and uncle for approval, she was on her way to the sultry, hilly college town across the bay from San Francisco. “The art gallery was up and the fashion shop was downstairs so the woman would shop and the men would go upstairs,” says Laidler. “I think it was designed that way and it worked very well.”

She arrived just as the Bay Area started to swing into the ’60s. Berkeley was ground zero of the Free Speech Movement that officially started on Dec 2, 1964 when Joan Baez led over 1,000 protesters into Sprout Hall during a sit-in on campus while singing “We Shall Overcome.”

Activist Mario Savio days later gained national attention when he was dragged away by campus cops while trying to give a speech at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre.

So while the counterculture surged past the doors of their art gallery on Telegraph Avenue near Shattuck and began to create The People’s Republic of Berkeley, Laidler and her family went about their business quietly selling pre-Columbian and primitive art as well as original prints of works by Matisse, Braque and Picasso. Their San Francisco customers were alarmed by the fracas. “They would call and say ‘Can we come down? Is it safe to park?” says Laidler.

Laidler had found her dream job - a fashion buyer and connoisseur of fine art. Then she met her husband David Laidler, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Western, at a nearby coffee shop known as the Pic or Café Mediterrraneum - a Berkeley institution which still exists and is famed for, among other things, as the place where activists developed the idea of a People’s Park nearby.

Laidler, an émigré from England, had just completed his PhD at the University of Chicago and took his first job in Berkeley. They married and settled into off-campus life with many friends in academic and artistic circles.

This charmed moment was not to last. By 1966, with the draft ratcheting up, Laidler found himself, as a green card holder, forced to take the medical exam. “There were no deferrals from universities and the Draft people told him they would see him in 10 days,” she says. So David Laidler took off for England within the week and Antje followed 6 weeks later. His career ultimately took them to the University of Manchester where their only child, Nicole, was born in 1970.

They moved to London in 1975 when Laidler was offered a job at Western. In London, Antje found herself at loose ends. “My child was in school and I did not have a job or friends,” Laidler recalls. “A neighbour said I should apply to Beal. Herb Ariss, bless him, even without a portfolio, said they’d give me a try.”

By 1979, after a two-year special art diploma course and two years in printmaking at H.B. Beal Laidler says they finally kicked her out. “I was the oldest in the class but mature students were a good influence on the younger kids because we were motivated,” she says.

In fact by graduation she was selling her prints successfully. “My mom gave me money for an etching press –for etching on zinc plates,” says Laidler. “I always made small editions with printmaking and never made more than 25.”

Laidler has always worked from a basement studio large enough for her press and art materials. In the mid 1980s she had major surgery and was flat on her back for six weeks. That made the very difficult, physical work of printmaking impossible – so she started to draw. As she healed she wanted more colour in her work and turned to making monoprints on her press. “Monoprints are lighthearted and fun. You can be spontaneous. It is like painting but on an etching press done with rollers and building the image up,” she says. “With etching if you make a mistake on an etching plate you have lost all your work.”

She credits Geraldine Davis of Toronto with bringing out some of her best work. Davis’s gallery in downtown Toronto was at 225 Richmond St. West near Duncan and she represented artists like the late Anne Meredith Barry, Ted Bieler and others for seven years until she closed in 1993. “I brought her some drawings and she loved them but she sent me to a store to get big paper – 26 inches by 40 – and told me to come back when they were filled,” says Laidler. “These works ended up as a travelling show at the McIntosh, in St. Thomas and Chatham and it was one of my real highlights as an artist.”

For the past twenty years Laidler has exhibited at a wide variety of group and solo shows in museums and galleries in Southern Ontario. The past several years has brought more change. When her husband retired the Laidler’s moved from their large family home and Antje she set up her third London studio in their new Masonville home. “I sold all my printmaking equipment when we downsized,” says Laidler. “It is a backbreaking work and I have a back problem and have had a hip replacement.”

So while she may have retired from etchings, she can still work in charcoal and pastels. “I am not painting houses, flowers and kids,” she says. “That is not me. I am more abstract and I enjoy making small pieces although some of this work would look good in a larger format. I love the drawing aspect of charcoal and pastels.”

Her late mother sent her a case of charcoal pencils from Germany in 1991 that she uses to this day. “She sent me boxes of them – they are Siberian charcoal and I just love using them,” says Laidler.

She called up Jens Thielsen to see if he was interested in her third series of glyphs. By her definition, glyphs are marks on paper. “Or it’s a sign,” says Laidler. “It’s primitive. I like the word glyph.”

It is a theme she has explored in depth. “My first series was etchings and the second series was monoprints,” says Laidler. “This is charcoal so I have worked in all three mediums now.” The genesis for the work may hearken back to her gallery in Berkeley. “I am taken with primitive and African art,” says Laidler. “”We have it in the house.”

Thielsen told her to bring the small pieces over to his gallery. Laidler was put off because unlike pastels, charcoal cannot be set with chemical fixers and it is easy to smear the work. “I asked how I was going to do this and he told me to put them in a shoe box with tissue paper in between,” she says.

It worked. Thielsen told her she could have the final summer show. “I feel extremely encouraged to have this show,” says Laidler. “It is difficult to find good galleries.”

The work, that she arranges in groups of three and then frames, hangs in its’ own gallery. The black and white theme makes an arresting graphic statement. “I make each piece and then put it aside,” says Laidler. “When I have about 20 then I assemble them together. The three are not done as a piece.”

Laidler loves black and white but says it is not very commercial here. “It’s more popular in Toronto but London is a conservative market,” she says.

She has resisted making her work a commodity. “I did the big Toronto outdoor art show and did very well but then I gave it up,” she says. “It forces you to do the same thing over and over again because it sells. I don’t want to get stuck in a rut.”

But with the strain of the move, adapting to her husband’s retirement and a case of tendinitis behind her, she is back in the disciplined rhythm and predictable routine of making art. There is little doubt that a new series of glyphs will find their mark.

Antje Laidler’s work is in the collection of the University of Toronto Art Centre, the Thames Art Gallery in Chatham and London’s McIntosh Gallery, University of Western Ontario, in many corporate collections in Ontario and private collections in Canada, the U.S., Australia, Germany, Ireland, Great Britain, Israel and Switzerland.

For more information: http://www.thielsengallery.com

Mary Ann Colihan likes to write about the many gifted artists in our region and visiting artists who open our portal to the world when they exhibit in London. She has her M.A. in journalism from the University of Western Ontario.