Village Squire, 1974-06, Page 51southern Ontario is farmland or towns and
villages that depend on farming. He is
concerned, now he says, with the preser-
vation of farmland being gobbled up by hydro
lines, highways, water and gas pipelines and
housing developments.
Returning to the subject of his prints, he
explains the problem and challenge he faced
in making his prints symbolize a whole
province. The only symbol common to the
whole province, he says, is the trillium, but
this has been used in so many places and
even stamped on goods not crafted in Canada
that he wanted to stay away from it all
together. So, he made local architecture his
symbol and sought out those buildings that
had architecture in common across the
province.
He markets different series of sketches:
one for the broad market of the whole
province and another for local sale on which
location of each sketch is noted.
"I get much more satisfaction out of doing
something to be reproduced as a print than as
a note/' he says. "First of all, I think the
images on the notes are too small to be
appreciated on their own merit. But the
prints, being larger, are just Targe enough to
take in the whole scene and can be arranged
in grouping by the buyer."
His present prints are mass produced and
he thinks it is important to get the message
across to the "average Joe" that "he can buy
something that is not an original but is still a
relatively limited edition because he is not
going to buy it in Manitoba or the States or in
Nova Scotia and he certainly isn't going to
walk into Woolworths and be able to take one
off the wall there. He's not buying a Kressge
oil or a Woolworth print; he's getting
something that relates to the region of his
home province.
Someday, he says, he would like to do a
limited series of prints, a series where only a
limited number of prints are made and each
one is numbered and signed by the artist. The
price, naturally; for these pieces is much
higher than the approximately $2.00 price tag
on the present Marlatt prints.
Jim hopes the sketches he produces will
perhaps lead to more work of a more serious
nature for him. He hopes they will perhaps
bring his name to the minds of those who
might like a watercolour or some of the other
paintings he does.
Some of this work is on display at his own
Green Gallery, a pleasant, tiny gallery set up
in the former garage of the Marlatt home on
St. Patrick Street in Goderich. Besides his
own work there are works from several other
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local 'painters, people like Doris McDougall of
Bayfield and Martha Rathburn of Goderich.
The biggest part of his own work on display
is in watercolour and though his prints are
very simple and straight forward, he delves
into more sophisticated themes in some of his
watercolours. He says he would like to
expand the scope of the gallery to include
more artists as his limited space permits.
His interest in restoration got him involved
in the early work in the program to restore the
historic square which is now nearing
completion. He was not in on the final
working of the project because .of the
necessity to devote more time to his own
buiness with the summer season approach-
ing
All in all, it's quite a full life for a man
trying to make a living from art.
You can enjoy Village Squire no
matter where you read it.
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VILLAGE SQUIRE/JUNE 1974, 13