Preface

Ranked as the sixteenth-largest city in Canada, Regina may boast a modest population of around 250,000, but its impact on the nation’s art scene is anything but small. The city’s creative spirit has always exceeded its size, giving rise to the influential Regina Five and the groundbreaking Regina Clay Movement while also serving as a home for some of Canada’s most important contemporary Indigenous artists. Since its founding in 1882 on a remote stretch of prairie grassland, Regina has cultivated a dynamic arts ecosystem fuelled by resilience, collaboration, and an enduring spirit of optimism.

Many Saskatchewan writers, W.O. Mitchell and Sinclair Ross among them, have reflected on the sublime vastness of the Canadian prairie and its power to stretch the limits of human imagination. It was this attribute, coupled with resilience and a deeply rooted spirit of cooperation, that proved essential in building a viable community in a harsh and unforgiving landscape. These same qualities also laid the groundwork for the development of art and culture in Regina, which, sustained by that enduring spirit, continues to flourish today.

In many respects, this book represents a process of rediscovery. Having grown up in Regina, my earliest and most formative encounters with art were shaped by local institutions and educators. I have vivid memories of art history classes with professors Maija Bismanis, Roger Lee, and Gerald McMaster (b.1953) at the University of Regina. I worked in the Fine Arts library housed in the old Regina College Building and often explored the nearby clay and sculpture studios. I attended exhibitions and events at the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery and spent countless hours at the Regina Public Library, browsing its extensive collection of art books and catching the latest shows at the Dunlop Art Gallery. I felt a deep affinity for these places long before I understood how central they were to the development of art in Regina.

My personal connection to the prairie landscape of southern Saskatchewan has played a formative role in shaping my understanding of place and artistic expression. Regular visits to the childhood homes of my parents near Avonlea and Oxbow provided early and sustained exposure to the region’s distinctive geography—marked by expansive skies and open, often austere, terrain. These experiences not only fostered a lasting and deeply personal bond with the province but also cultivated an early appreciation for the profound attachment to the prairie that characterizes the work of many Saskatchewan artists. The landscape itself commands attention; its scale, quietude, and atmospheric presence lend it a quality that is at once humbling and enduringly evocative. Artist Ruth Pawson (1908–1994), who spent over five decades capturing prairie landscapes, embodied this sensibility. Her enduring fascination with the prairie is reflected in a quotation she kept for many years on an index card:

The great thing about the Prairie is that it lies down at your feet, thrusting you up on a stage surrounded by nothing but open sky…. It is an ancient pounded-down land and just getting out there in the middle of it, feeling the wind through an open window, sensing the enormity of the world, can turn you inside out with ecstasy.

Indigenous Peoples who have been in the area now called Saskatchewan for approximately eleven thousand years are likewise deeply connected to the land, leaving behind a wealth of pictographs and petroglyphs throughout the province, as well as many ceremonial and utilitarian objects. The Cree, Saulteaux, Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota were the original inhabitants of Regina and its surroundings. Their presence in the area reshaped the land in profound ways that continue to resonate. Largely viewed by early settlers as a “vanishing race,” the Indigenous Peoples of the Prairies were marginalized by White society for much of the twentieth century. Their perseverance and sustained efforts to redress the impact of colonialism have paid dividends in recent years, including through art. Institutions, such as the MacKenzie Art Gallery, have supported this resurgence, providing platforms for artists and educators like Gerald McMaster, Bob Boyer (1948–2004), and Edward Poitras (b.1953), whose work reclaims cultural traditions and reimagines them in contemporary contexts.

The location selected by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) for the future town of Regina—incorporated in 1882—offered few natural advantages beyond a small creek, a tributary of the Qu’Appelle River. Yet, within a few years, the town had grown to include sturdy wood-framed houses, along with churches, schools, a railway station, and civic buildings such as a town hall and fire station. Institutions devoted to art and education also began to emerge, alongside green spaces like Stanley Park, established near the CPR station. The provincial government soon joined efforts to enhance Regina’s landscape by developing an expansive park surrounding the legislative building, while the city contributed by planting thousands of trees along its streets.

Efforts to strengthen Regina’s social fabric were led in large part by women, particularly through their involvement in church committees and organizations such as the Regina Local Council of Women (LCW), established in 1895. A few years later, the LCW created its Fine and Applied Arts Committee. Many of its members, along with those in the affiliated Women’s Educational Club, approached art as they did other forms of social reform, viewing it as essential to fostering an enlightened and progressive society. Both groups organized public art exhibitions and curated collections, making them accessible through the Regina Public Library and Regina College.

Despite the efforts of women’s groups and organizations such as the Regina Sketch Club, the city’s isolation and small size made it difficult for artists to support themselves through their art. Pawson and Dorothy Martin (1909–1984) were schoolteachers, Inglis Sheldon-Williams (1870–1940) taught at Regina College, David H. Payne (1890–1950) was a letter carrier, and Augustus Kenderdine (1870–1947) taught at the University of Saskatchewan. However, the difficulties facing artists in continuing their education and mounting exhibitions led several to leave the city. Sybil Henley Jacobson (1881–1953), who struggled financially after arriving from England in 1912, moved to Winnipeg in 1932 and then to Vancouver. George Campbell Tinning (1910–1996), who studied at Regina College and exhibited with the short-lived Junior Art League and in other spaces, left for Maine to study watercolour painting. The talented Mary Filer (1920–2016) exhibited in Regina while still in high school, but it was in Montreal, where she studied at McGill University’s Neurological Institute, that she reconnected with art. Mashel Teitelbaum (1921–1985), who failed in his attempt to establish an art gallery in 1947, left for Vancouver the following year.

Saskatchewan’s election of a Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) government in 1944 brought with it a new approach to the arts. Aiming to democratize access and expand public support, the CCF established the Saskatchewan Arts Board in 1948—the first agency of its kind in North America. In the postwar years, Regina also witnessed a surge in artistic activity, with the growing prominence of the art department at the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus, and the opening of the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery in 1953. These milestones contributed to the professionalization of the arts, a momentum further strengthened by the launch of the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops in 1955 and the introduction of the first degree programs in art at the Regina Campus in the late 1960s.

Regina’s arts community continues to be shaped by a complex interplay of geography, history, and people. From its early days as a remote settlement, the city developed a strong tradition of creativity and cultural engagement, despite the challenges of isolation and limited resources. The efforts of local artists, educators, community leaders, and especially women’s organizations laid the groundwork for a vibrant cultural scene. Government support in the mid-twentieth century helped professionalize the arts, while institutions like the University of Regina and the MacKenzie Art Gallery provided platforms for new creative voices to emerge. Today, Indigenous artists play a leading role in shaping the city’s artistic identity, drawing on deep cultural roots to engage with contemporary issues. Regina’s artistic legacy continues to evolve, embedded in its past but firmly oriented toward the future.