Especially in the past 30 years, the art world has become more pluralistic, less beholden to notions of “high” and “low.” For evidence, just head to the venerable MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, first stop in a planned five-city tour of the landscape paintings of Saskatchewan-born Levine (Flexie) Flexhaug. Don’t fret if you’ve never heard of the self-taught Flexhaug, who died at the age of 56 in the summer of 1974. He wasn’t famous even in his heyday – the late 1930s through the early 60s – as he travelled around Western Canada cranking out and selling perhaps thousands of variations of essentially the same scene: a placid lake bracketed by mountains, woods, a mostly cloudless sky, with a wild animal (the elk was a favourite) foregrounded in a clearing.
Once upon a time, a Flexhaug oil-based-housepaint-on-beaver-board would have been dismissed as kitsch; today, the oeuvre is admired for its charm, rigour and high-keyed pictorialism, and Flexhaug for his resourcefulness and stamina. Curated by Nancy Tousley and Peter White, accompanied by a superb colour-packed catalogue, the MacKenzie exhibition has to date attracted more than 4,000 visitors. The 450-plus paintings, including loans from such artists-of-note/Flexie collectors Chris Cran and David Thauberger, are on view through Aug. 9. Next stop in the “Flexiemania” tour: Calgary, late October.