Press Release
Annie Duriez, Director, Uplands Cultural and Heritage Centre

Uplands Cultural and Heritage centre will open its 2003 season by paying homage to a much admired and beloved artist, Katharine Kinsman, who will have died five years ago this August. Titled "Remembering Kay: A Retrospective of Works by Katharine Kinsman (1909 - 1998)," the exhibit will present approximately 50 paintings and sketches on loan from private collections, many of which have never been seen by the general public.

A reception will take place on Thursday, February 6th, 2003 at 7 p.m. at Uplands. The evening will include the first public showing of a short documentary film on Kinsman by Renée Arshinoff, a graduate of Bishop's University. The film contains a series of interviews featuring Kay, her colleagues and close friends, as well as a selection of Kay's works.

Kay Kinsman
(Photo: Courtesy of Uplands Cultural and Heritage Centre)

Born Katharine Bell in 1909 in Los Angeles, California, Kinsman attended private schools in Havana, Cuba, Jamaica, and New York. She studied at the Parsons School of Fine and Applied Arts and the École Amédée Ozenfant in Paris. It was there that Kinsman met and married Ronald Lewis Kinsman in 1932. The couple had three children and moved to Montreal shortly before the war. Once settled, Kinsman resumed art classes at the Art School of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts under Ann Savage and Arthur Lismer. Her watercolours of the disappearing parts of the city and the harbour became cherished and featured in many exhibitions. Her husband Ronald died in 1965. Two years later, Kinsman published a collection of drawings and paintings titled "Montreal Sketchbook," now out of print. While in Montreal, Kinsman participated in solo and group shows at Place Ville-Marie, Mountain Playhouse, and the Musée des beaux-arts de Montreal.

In 1971, Kinsman traveled to England where she spent 10 years painting, as well as studying at the Malvern School of Art. The "Broadway Sketchbook" was published in 1974. While in England, Kinsman's work was exhibited in both solo and group exhibits, including shows in Broadway, the Malvern Festival, and group shows at the Royal Water Colour Society and the Royal Society of Graphic Artists in London.

FUNERAL PARLOURS, MONKS, AND HELL'S ANGELS
In 1981, Kinsman returned to Quebec and decided to settle in Lennoxville:
"Myself, I came here [Lennoxville] in the eighties, and it was a lucky day for me. I had recently arrived in Montreal from Worcestershire with Tim, a very delightful Welsh Border Collie. It turned out that Montreal landlords were averse to dogs but in Lennoxville they were made welcome. Indeed, soon after our arrival, I enrolled in a course of Contemporary Music at Bishop's University, and it speaks well for a town that extends higher education even to Welsh Border Collies. So I liked Lennoxville very much and decided to stay - at least until Tim and I could get our degrees. Where in the world, I asked myself, could one find another place so rich in friendship as well as having butterfly bedecked funeral parlours, monks and Hell's Angels?"
- Lennoxville Sketchbook / Sur le vif, Kay Kinsman, 1990

HONORARY DOCTORATE
Not only did Kinsman enroll in a number of classes at Bishop's University, she was awarded two Bachelors' degrees in 1983 - at the age of 74. She later went on to earn a Masters degree in medieval history from McGill in 1987. In 1990, Bishop's recognized her "lifetime of painting, scholarly curiosity, and passion for the arts" by presenting her with an Honorary Doctorate.

As a Lennoxville resident, Kinsman continued to exhibit her paintings and sketches in solo and group shows including Festival Lennoxville, The Piggery Theatre, Musée Beaulne, the Sherbrooke Trust, la Société d'histoire des Cantons-de-l'Est, le Musée des beaux arts de Sherbrooke, and Uplands, with her last solo show being at the Bishop's University Art Gallery in 1995. The curator of that show described Kinsman's works thus: "Kinsman's oeuvre does not belong with the sombre and anguished artistic production which characterizes the art of our times. Her serene paintings describe the simple things and subtle pleasures that are at the core of everyday life. However, this is not a pictorial chronicle centred on reality. Quite to the contrary, her supple and sinuous drawing flows across the page, free of all constraints except that of transforming the subject according to her fancy and imagination. Directly, through line and colour, the artist conveys her moods, her emotions."

"Remembering Kay." will continue until March 30th, 2003. Uplands is open Thursday, Friday, and Sunday from 1-4:30 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, call (819) 564-0409.