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Gerald Squires I didn't know about art as a child; culture and religion but no art. Art needs to be bought therefore we need wealth. Wealth didn't really exist in Newfoundland then, we were too poor. From Art as Expression: Creativity and Madness, An Interview With Gerald Squires. Newfoundland Life Style vol.7, no.4, 1987, p.18. Gerald Squires was born in Change Islands, Newfoundland, in 1937. When he was 12, his family moved to Toronto, Ontario. At the age of 15, after his first artistic training through commercial art classes, Squires began painting. He studied for a year at the Ontario College of Art before taking a position as a newspaper illustrator for the now defunct Toronto Telegram. Among other things, the newspaper published a series of his line drawings of historic Toronto churches and street scenes. In the late 1960's Squires to quit his job to devote himself full-time to his art, and had several solo exhibitions. Returning to Newfoundland in 1969, he eventually settled in Ferryland, where he lived in an abandoned lighthouse with his wife and two daughters. He later relocated to Holyrood.
Squires is known for his portraits, surrealistic paintings and dramatic Newfoundland landscapes. His work can be found in private and public collections including that of the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Catholic Conference of Bishops, York University, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Many of his paintings and sculptures are reproduced in a 1995 Breakwater Books publication entitled Gerald Squires: Newfoundland Artist. He has had many solo and group exhibitions including a major retrospective of four decades of work mounted by the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador in September 1998. That same year Squires was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and appointed to the Order of Canada. Squires continues to live and work in Newfoundland.
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