Douglas Haynes

Douglas Haynes describes his art as an open-ended project that endlessly builds upon itself. "You always start the next painting or series based on the work that came before it," says the painter and University of Alberta professor emeritus. "This is the way I work, creating a dialogue between things. Not that this process is linear. It's more like an expanding bubble where everything on the edge relates to itself as well as the centre" Haynes's recent artistic dialogue started with a print he made last year for an Edmonton fundraiser. "The print was the first etching I've done in a long time. It was so unlike painting, very step-by-step, layer by layer," he says. In particular, the collage shapes he created for the project - including calligraphy marks - stuck with him. "I kept on going with some of that collage style in my sketches," says Haynes, 67. "You could also say that the calligraphy has always been there. Even in my first works in the '60's, I was scratching calligraphy marks into the pieces, both to evoke the idea of age, but also to use the mark as a symbol mark of my hand." Some 75 sketches into his new series, Haynes saw a bullfighter in one of his works, which was natural given his long-held fascination with Spain and Spanish art. He dubbed the shape Manolete, the nickname of Maunel Rodriguez y Sanchez, perhaps the greatest Spanish matador of all time. Haynes decided to use the theme as the series' visual core. "It's not so much a series about bullfighting, but exploring the visual mythology of the bullfight: the large dark shape of the bull and the guy in lights facing it".

Toledo Ladder - 1997
acrylic on canvas, 78.5 in x 38.5 in