Norman Yates | |
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Born | Edward Norman Yates July 23, 1923
Calgary, Alberta |
Died | February 9, 2014
Victoria, BC | (aged 90)
Education | Ontario College of Art (graduated 1951) |
Known for | artist, educator, arts advocate |
Spouse | Whynona Yates (1926-1998) |
Norman Yates RCA (September 23, 1923 – February 09, 2014) was a painter in washes of colour of panoramic abstract and semi-abstract paintings that he called "landspaces". His themes were space and energy. [1] In 2023, Patricia Bovey said that his landscapes are "flowing, evocative, ephemeral and always changing, reflecting the intangibility of the light, skies, and atmospheric effects". She added that his paintings are significant works in the annals of Western Canadian Art. [2]
Yates was born in Calgary and grew up in Regina. After four years of service as a radar technician in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War, he attended the Ontario College of Art, graduating in 1951. [3] After 3 years in Toronto, in 1954, he was hired to teach in the University of Alberta's department of arts and design in Edmonton where he remained until he retired in 1989.
In 1972, Yates and his family moved to a large treed tract of land near Tomahawk, 96 kilometres west of Edmonton where he experienced an overwhelming sense of space. At much the same time, he discovered the work of J. M. W. Turner and he studied it in depth. Both the new place for his painting and Turner influenced his subsequent paintings.
During the 1970s, Yates served as an arts advocate and social activist, establishing the Alberta branch of the Canadian Society for Education Through Art, chairing the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, serving on the Western Canada Art Council and trying to prevent the demolition of older homes in his neighborhood. But having decided his activism was useless, in 1989, Yates and his wife moved to Victoria, BC. [3]