An Okotoks artist has found beauty in his own backyard.
Just so happens that, for Paul Rasporich, that yard has become a popular hangout for deer.
Watching the local fauna visit, he has created the exhibition Doe Re Mi consisting of paintings, drawings and sculpture, along with its centrepiece painting Meet Jane Doe, which went onto the walls of Lineham House Galleries for sale as of Nov. 17.
“As an artist, aesthetically, they are absolutely beautiful,” Rasporich said. “I can paint them over and over again.”
With a career of figurative painting, primarily portraiture, Rasporich was also driven by his love for the natural world, whether that means painting fly fishers or the various fauna that inhabit the world around him.
“My wife (Lee Kvern) and I would go to the Banff Centre to paint, and the big attraction was the elk would walk right by your studio,” Rasporich said.
The night the exhibition went in, his friend, and Îyârhe Nakoda elder Virgil Stephens, had visited and given a blessing.
Rasporich said he spoke of the importance of coexistence in this age, extending not only to deer and wildlife, but across cultures.
Rather than the backdrop of his yard, the artist drew design cues and inspiration from John Singer Sargent’s paintings The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, but where that painting looks down at the children from an adult’s height, he put the viewer’s perspective below the doe.
“For some reason Jane Doe came through the yard, I got right down as low as I could,” Rasporich said. “So I’m lying on the grass and she’s right there, so I take a picture and I put her in this painting.
“I don’t now what it means, but it has something to do with the best of European culture, to me, is always the art, and a great part of Indigenous culture is the harmony with nature.
“I’m no better than this deer, who says I’m more important? So I wanted to put her at the forefront, and the way she was looking at me, I thought it was compelling.”
Living so close to nature, and understanding the deer present challenges along with their beauty, Rasporich acknowledged there may not be a perfect solution, but wanted to keep an open mind.
“In northern Finland, for Instance, the Sami people have deer in their towns, and they manage to coexist with them,” Rasporich said. “They are a part of their economy, and I don’t know what that could look like here, but there are solutions and I view it overall as a positive to have to have them here.
“I think any management is not going to be perfect, it's not going to please everybody but yeah, as an artist, they're beautiful.
“They have been here since time immemorial.”
While Rasporich retired from a 20-year career of teaching in 2022, that didn’t keep him out of the classroom, as he continues to present for students how to draw nature, studying a certain animal each time – including deer.
Some of the results are also on display with his work, as Rasporich insists continually on the importance of young artists.
"Virtually all these sketches get everything correct, but not only that, but the kids get the spirit right away,” he said. "Their visions are so fresh; they're all working from the same photo and I'm drawing at the front of the room and they're following along with me, but they all do something different.”
For more information or to contact Lineham House Galleries, visit linehamhousegalleries.ca.
More information about Rasporich can be found at paulrasporich.com.
