"When I was 22, I lived in Calgary, in the world’s worst apartment above Bagels and Buns. But more fortuitously, I also lived above the venerable Masters Gallery. I would gaze through the window, longingly. One day I got up the courage and went inside. On the wall, there it was – a Joane Cardinal-Schubert painting. I couldn’t stop looking at it. It was so complicated, yet so simple. So visceral and so beautiful. I thought about it day and night. Finally, I just had to buy it. It was five times my rent and worth every cent.
Thus started my life of collecting. But of course you don’t really collect art. You are just a keeper of it. It belongs to the artist and to the world. When I look at a painting on my wall, I see a piece of the artist. I like to imagine what he or she was doing the day the work was started. What music was playing in the studio? What was happening in their life? But most of all, I think how lucky I am to have these personal, almost human things that I get to take care of...”
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Bruce McCulloch is an actor, director and writer, and a member of the “The Kids in the Hall.” Bruce spends most of his time in L.A. where he writes and produces for network and cable television.
Image credit:
Joane Cardinal-Schubert
Self Portrait – Warshirt – Secrets, 1991
Mixed media on paper
Art Gallery of Alberta Collection, purchased in 1991 with funds from the Art Associates of The Edmonton Art Gallery