It’s a long way from post-war England to Sudbury, Canada’s hard-rock mining centre in northern Ontario, but that was the trip Ivan Wheale made as a young man.
After a stint with the Royal Air Force, he emigrated with his wife to Canada and was selling hardware items in a construction and renovation centre. Art however had always been a hobby, and a lingering passion in the back of his mind.
A special trip south to Toronto to visit to the Art Gallery of Ontario and the first North American exhibition of works by Van Gogh, changed his life with the realization that he must no longer deny his need to create.
And create he has with close to 100 solo exhibitions of his work, a couple of pieces of which have found their way into the collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in Windsor Castle. His work is most often inspired by the rugged beauty of northern Ontario, and the granite shoreline of the Canadian shield on the Great Lakes of Georgian Bay, Huron, and Superior.
He has also travelled the length and breadth of Canada in with trip to Europe where other scenes have inspired him.
Charity and other volunteer community participation resulted in an honorary doctor of laws degree being awarded to him by Laurentian University.
He was featured as an ‘artist to collect’ in the latest edition of the prestigious Arabella magazine of Canadian Art, Architecture, and Design
A magnificent and detailed realist painter, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Ivan Wheale
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