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Game Of Checkers
Checkers Artist James Lumbers
James Lumbers
1929-present
Toronto, Ontario
  
A Game of Checkers
“Many years ago there were two men who lived on neighboring farms near the area where I spent my childhood. Their names were John Parker and Lou Stanton. They each had a single passion and that was to beat each other at a game of checkers. Every Saturday afternoon in this old drive shed, John and Lou faced each other in their weekly battle of wits. The old tractor (a Rock Island G-2) belonged to John until he died in the 1930's. He left it to his lifelong friend Lou, but he only survived two more years. Now and then people say they can hear the click of checkers in the old shed, but others say it's just the chickens. What do you think?”
Lumbers is a modern Canadian artist who graduated from the Ontario College of Art.
- He had a dream of becoming an artist from an early age but this ambition was not well received by his parents so after graduating from art college, he worked for many years as an industrial and corporate designer before finally establishing himself in an artistic career.
- James has become one of Canada's most respected and successful artists and his wilderness landscapes, nostalgic images of Canada's past and inspiring celebrity portraits are part of private art, prints and posters collections around the world.
- As a visual artist, Lumbers has made a significant contribution in the preservation of Canada’s wonderful heritage and when he is not creating his unique motifs, making public appearances or traveling across Canada researching history for his artistic expression, James relaxes and finds inspiration in his Northern Ontario retreat.
- While in northern Canada, in the Hudson Bay lowlands and throughout many areas of the sub arctic, James Lumbers spent a great deal of time with Native people and documented their lifestyles and through his sincerity and compassion, earned the respect of the Aboriginal peoples of the North.
- Imbued within all his paintings of this period is a strong, pervading sense of realism that resulted from his experiences within the northern Canadian landscape and these images became his visual liberator.
- Thus, from about 1970 he began painting various themes and subject matter in the style of Realism and his favorite medium to release his artistic expression within is acrylic paint.
- A recurring theme in all his work is portraying the Canadian heritage and the traditions that have made Canadians who they are and Canadian society what it is today.
- When Lumbers was afforded an opportunity to join a scientific expedition in 1970 traveling to the Sub Arctic, he readily accepted the challenge in order to document wildlife of the area; the journey changed his life perspective forever and resulted in a love affair with the north that would continue for many years; his lasting respect for the cultures and raw beauty of the arctic climate and the Hudson Bay lowlands has become a reoccurring theme in his paintings, prints and posters.
- James was elected a Fellow of the Explorers Club of New York in 1973 as a result of his visual documentation of the peoples and wildlife of the far north and then he was elected a member of the Society of Animal Artists of New York later that same year; by the late 70’s Lumbers was recognized as one of Canada’s best known realist painters.
- James is best known for his heritage ‘Moments in Time’ series; this unusual thematic style of painting all started on a summer afternoon some years ago, while in Georgian Bay sketching an abandoned house on an island in the area, he found a diary with some negatives taken in 1913 tucked neatly inside; a few months later, he printed them and found that someone had photographed the family sitting on the same porch in much the same manner as in his sketch; this discovery led to his series of heritage paintings called ‘Moments in Time’ wherein his theme relies on ghost images where the artist has carefully blended reflections of the past into motifs of the present to create thought provoking tributes of simpler times long gone.
“In retrospect, it’s hard to believe it just happened! I was sketching an abandoned cottage in Georgian Bay back in 1976. On the later trip that fall, while poking about the ruins, I found the remains of an old diary and a few musty negatives that were tucked inside. When developed months later, the photos revealed a family relaxing in 1913 on the cottage porch, sitting precisely where I had sat sketching. The angle of the photograph matched my completed painting exactly. So, more on a whim than anything else, I decided to include these ‘ghosts’ in my painting and aptly called it Memories of a Summer Day.”
- The ‘Game of Checkers’ above represents one of Lumbers genre scenes from this series where he’s depicted the ghosts of two old friends whose single passion was to meet on a Saturday afternoon in the drive shed and play one challenging game of checkers after another trying to beat each other over the checkerboard.
- The realism within the motif in the artistic expression of the shed, old tractor, chickens and the two old men brings forth a deep sense of nostalgia surrounding a long standing checkers game in the corner of the shed between the opponents facing each other at the checkerboard.
- Lumbers strong sense of history is embodied within his nostalgic scenes that are depicted with a natural sense of realism.
“We are our the products of our memories and traditions. We must fight to preserve our heritage and our landscape…time changes most things, but it is important that we all realize that what binds one generation to the next is memory — and that’s what I paint.” |
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