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North Bay Artist brings art to life

'The art critic I like the best is the one who looks at the painting and takes out their wallet to pay for it. I will listen to that person' laughs North Bay artist Jack Lockhart

Ask North Bay artist Jack Lockhart what he considers to be his best painting, and he'll tell you he hasn't done it yet.

"You're always experimenting. You're always trying to get something different, something very, very unique that nobody else has. So that's always a challenge but it's a fun thing to do."

Lockhart works in oils, acrylics and watercolours.

Something he has been experimenting with is alcohol inks.

"It's done on a special paper, but the paper is kind of translucent, so you can either hang it and frame it as a regular painting, or you can frame it just looking through it, because you can look right through the painting, and that's kind of different. That's a brand new medium that exists today."

It's been ten years since Lockhart has hosted a large-scale art show of his own work. The reason for holding his recent exhibit was simple, his inventory was big enough, 141 pieces and the time was right.

Lockhart works in oils, acrylics and watercolours, and because he likes the challenge of doing something different, his subject matter varies. He's done everything from landscapes to NORAD to a commissioned piece for a race car driver who competed in the Daytona 500. He wanted Lockhard to paint his speedboat flying through the water off Daytona Beach.

Susan Brownlee is one of hundreds of people who attended his recent show. Brownlee went because of her appreciation for art that deals with nature scenes and wildlife.

"When I look for that kind of art I go to the artists from Northern Ontario, only because they've experienced it. They've got an eye for beauty, and to come and look at Jack Lockhart's paintings is something pretty special because the art pieces are so unique."   

Nancy Bruckschwaiger was fascinated by Lockhart's 3-D paintings.

"I've never heard of it. I'm really curious to understand how he came up with this idea, the glasses are really a new dimension to art. It's really neat that he's trying something new. It's interesting." 

Lockhart explains to people that it is due to a spectrum of colour.

"Think of a rainbow from the warm colours to the cool colours, your reds to your blues. And the way it works is that every colour has its own wavelength in the spectrum. So the scientists at MIT, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) decided to create glasses with an optical coating that allows the breakdown of the spectrum. So what happens is, all of those different wavelengths of the colours in the paintings are broken down by the glasses and it becomes 3-D."

Lockhart says as long as the warm colours are more in the foreground and the cooler colours in the background it works on any kind of medium, any painting, any landscape, anything. 

"If you reversed that and had your cool colours in the foreground it wouldn't work because your wavelengths are so different. It's not like the old way of 3-D where you have the red lens and the blue lens, and the image was all blurry until you put the glasses on. This is not the case. These paintings are actually finished the way they appear, you don't need to use the glasses. So it's fun to see the person thinking of buying it saying 'I really want to get that painting and I say well, would you like to see something more about your painting, put those glasses on'. Now they're amazed because the painting just came right out at them."

With the acrylics, he's been working with plaster for high texture.

"I had a totally blind person come to my gallery and she was thrilled because she was able to feel the texture with her hands and so by touch, she was able to figure out what the painting was. It was something I never thought about when I was actually doing it." 

Lockhart has never entered his work in juried shows. 

"Ken Danby, one of the very best artists in the world came to see me painting when I was in South River at the South River Art Festival one time, and we got talking about art critics.  I said 'Ken, you know the art critic I like the best? It's the one who looks at the painting and takes out their wallet to pay for it. I will listen to that person,'" laughed Lockhart.

"Of all the things I think that has been an advantage with painting, is all the people I've met. I've got paintings in the hands of Prime Minister's, U.S. Ambassador's, I sold one to American actress and producer Gail O'Grady when she was up here filming Love on Ice. I've had one of the Dragon's from the Dragon's Den at our place back in June," said Lockhart.

"All of these different kinds of people I would never have met except for the fact that I'm painting."