Celebrated Nova Scotia artist Tom Forrestall dies at age 88

Tom Forrestall, the Nova Scotia artist who won critical acclaim in the 1960s as part of a renewed interest in realist painting, has died at the age of 88.

Forrestall, whose work can be found in major public and private collections across North America and Europe, was “an artist’s artist,” said writer and curator Ray Cronin.

“He was somebody who was generous with his time, somebody who worked constantly. He was a full-time painter since 1960, that’s how he made his living. That’s a very hard thing to do anywhere, but especially in Atlantic Canada,” Cronin told CBC Nova Scotia News in an interview Friday.

“He was a model for other artists for integrity and for how you can actually go and succeed and make a living as an artist, and keep true to your own ideals and your own work.”

One of Forrestall’s best-known works, Island in the Ice, hangs permanently at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. The painting, which is nearly two metres across, depicts Devils Island in Halifax harbour surrounded by ice floes.

Forrestall was born in Middleton, N.S., in 1936. While studying art at New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University, he was taught by iconic Canadian painter Alex Colville, who died in Wolfville, N.S., in 2013. 

“It was [Forrestall] and Mary Pratt and Christopher Pratt. They were all students of Alex Colville, and they created a way of painting based in Atlantic Canada that was really unique in the whole country. They were really among the best-known artists from the 1960s right through the present day in Canada,” Cronin said.

Cronin said Colville taught Forrestall how to paint with egg tempura paints, where powdered pigment is mixed with egg yolks, which dry clear. 

“It’s a very old style, a very old technique, it goes back to the Middle Ages. But Tom loved it and he used it for 60 years,” he said.

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While Colville was a major influence on Forrestall, Cronin said Forrestall approached painting differently.

“Tom was more observational in the sense of painting what he saw [and] Colville maybe invented more of his scenes,” he said. “But Colville was always the model, he was the person that Tom compared himself to every day.

“He was very humble, he never thought he got anywhere close. But I think history will show he was a peer of Colville, not just a student.”

Forrestall’s paintings have gone from $25,000 to $75,000 at auctions, Cronin said.

He was a prolific painter too. Cronin said Forrestall was watercolour painting “right up until a few days ago.” 

‘Very generous with his time and his art’

Cronin said Forrestall was probably the most beloved artist in Atlantic Canada and Nova Scotia.

“He was a pillar of the arts community, he was somebody who was very generous with his time and his art,” he said.

The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia posted a tribute to Forrestall on Friday afternoon.

In a post to its Facebook page, the gallery said it was “deeply saddened” by the artist’s death. 

“As a prominent pillar of Atlantic realism, Tom had an uncanny ability to draw viewers into his compositions and lead us to see the extraordinary beauty that is part and parcel of the minutia of everyday objects and life,” the post read in part.

The gallery noted it holds more than 100 of Forrestall’s works in its permanent collection.