visit to the art gallery

Better late than never, I suppose...the pictures from our visit to the art gallery in Toronto during the boys' March Break.

It was very interesting.  I hadn't been to an art gallery in years, and the boys have only each been once or maybe twice with class trips so I wasn't sure what to expect from them.  We ended up staying for 3 hours, and here are some of our favourites from the day:

 We started in the lower level, with the scale models of all different types of ships.  These were some of my favourites - turns out the ships the boys picked didn't show up on my camera (no flash allowed - so even though I took buckets of pictures, I have several you can't see a darn thing).

This was S's favourite painting - he likes modern/abstract...so not like me in just this one particular matter!  I apologize I cannot give credit where credit is due because I forgot to take a picture of the name and have forgotten it already.

N, being a boy, chose this as his favourite piece - of course...a bathroom made entirely of mesh screening.  Ditto over here with the credit.

 

We were all impressed by this piece by (Kori?) Newkirk.  Look closely...

...it's made of beads strung on synthetic hair.  Amazing.

There was an entire wall of these panels covered in spear heads and other tool pieces - the boys walked right past it at first, but then came back to look at individual pieces. 

The boys loved these (even though N walked right past them the first time too - he was having "issues" with paying attention...made by Karoo Ashevak.

For myself, I discovered a new-to-me artist:  Cornelius Krieghoff.  The details in his paintings (and there were many of them) were absolutely amazing!

 He painted scenes typical of the "Canadian" experience of the times...mostly Habitants and Native Americans - in the 1800s.  Plenty of winter, fall, and stomy scenes to choose from.

 Just look at that lantern...it was maybe 1/2" tall and looked exactly like a real tin lantern (although I couldn't capture it on film).

 

N liked all of the pieces that had "cracking ice" in them...and there were quite a handful of them.  I was trying to capture individual parts of the canvas rather than the whole piece at once...the costuming and details were so intricate-and the subject matter was right up my alley.  His focus was on everyday life.

On the whole, I was impressed with the gallery, and quite frankly I was surprised by how long we stayed.  I will be looking into more of that type of outing with the children in the future.