Slow Burn - Harold Klunder (20 July, 2006) Slow burn: Harold Klunder's paintings aren't Julia Dault, National Post Published: Thursday, July 20, 2006 An overnight success in 40 years. That's how art dealer James Baird describes Harold Klunder, the veteran painter currently experiencing unprecedented commercial success with his large, colourful abstractions. "Careful, that one's still wet," says Baird jokingly, pointing to a smaller work called Atlantic Light, 2006, a perfect oil on wood board, where colourful forms almost settle into recognizable objects -- like a sun over an ocean shore, say -- but then never quite resolve, as no upstanding abstraction should. The piece is the most recent painting of Four Decades, the retrospective-like exhibition of Klunder's work currently on view by appointment only at James Baird>Pouch Cove, Baird's solution to the recent forced closures of the Pouch Cove Foundation, which would normally have hosted the exhibition. "I like the tension of in-between spaces," says Klunder, a soft-spoken man who has just flown in to Pouch Cove, Nfld., from his home in Flesherton, Ont. A painter since graduating in 1964 from the Central Technical School in Toronto, Klunder's love for in-betweens has played out in various ways over the years, ranging from pure abstraction to expressionism to experiments nearing figuration. Like any established artist, Klunder exhibits his work at various galleries across the country, including the TrepanierBaer Gallery (Calgary), the Michael Gibson Gallery (London, Ont.) and the Clint Roenisch Gallery (Toronto). And while he has steadily produced and sold work over the years, interest has never been higher. Last fall, a show at the Clint Roenisch Gallery completely sold out, a testament to his renaissance. "Klunder isn't the kind of artist who waits for inspiration," explains Michael Gibson, who has represented the artist for nearly six years, "He spends 12-hour days in the studio and has for many years. And you see it," he says, citing the way a Klunder painting has a way of slowly unfolding and changing over time, "like a slow burn". Though things like marketing (through catalogues and art fairs) and collectors' spatial needs have no doubt contributed to Klunder's popularity, in the end, Gibson knows it's all about the painting. "Harold's not trendy," he says. "He's just doing it and doing it well. He just paints very good paintings." Out in Pouch, the nine works that make up Four Decades are a well-timed look at moments from Klunder's stylistic trajectory, starting with works completed in the early '70s, like Stone Bridge (1972), Fender Blues (1973) and Orange Lustre (1973), elongated monochromatic canvases covered in drips of subtly colourful paint. "I like to call that my 'Greenbergian phase,' " says Klunder, referring to the influential American art critic Clement Greenberg who supported the fevered Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s and helped shepherd Jackson Pollock and his drip paintings to legendary status. But though Klunder's early technique is clearly Pollock-inspired, simply echoing the great painter wasn't enough. Skyway Bridge (1973), for example, feels like an exorcism, where Klunder disrupts the drippy, "accidental" surface by smearing the drops across the canvas in one fell swoop. Big, haunting paintings like Crocodile God (1974) and Flat Out (1974-1976) are when Klunder figures he found his voice. Here, the tension is in the physical surface, where layers of paint are visible but trapped under a powerful cover of black, a deep from which surprising things emerge like a blue line here and a red hiccup there. The remaining two pieces in the exhibit are monumental. Spirit Matter III (Self-Portrait) (1989-1991) is a large, violently colourful composition in four panels where faces peer out from the reds, oranges and pinks. Finally, at more than two metres in length, the apex of the exhibition is Future, Present, Past (1986-1987) a breathtaking masterpiece that is Van Gogh, the Fauves, Munch and De Kooning rolled into one. But then, of course, it's none of these; in colour, impasto, form, movement and surety, it is, quite simply, a Klunder. The artist stands between this older, monster painting and Atlantic Light, the "still wet" work on the adjoining wall, looking back and forth between the two while wearing a studied expression, as if he's looking in the mirror. "Funny," he says, seemingly reassured, "they're really not all that different." - Harold Klunder's works are on view in Pouch Cove, Nfld., until Aug. 12. For more information, contact James Baird> Pouch Cove at 709-727-9771.