GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

21. A psychiatrist's opinion, and two artists

A STORY IDEA MY DAD SUGGESTED LED ME to interview the director of the Ontario Psychiatric Hospital in Kingston. Dr. John Christie was a very personable, relaxed man in his 40s who first told me there was no research to support Dad's theory, but then gave me a remarkable lot of his time.

Dad wondered if the Roman Catholic sacrament of Confession (regular reporting, out loud to a priest, of one's faults, aka sins) protected a person's sanity. (It's now called Reconciliation.) Not an RC, the doctor said it was likely but there was no scientific literature about it. We discussed mental health in general.

Dr. Christie felt that about 80 percent of his patients were in the Hospital because they had no reason to get up in the morning. Work is essential to our well-being, he said. Everyone must have "a god" in life, a particular activity requiring self-discipline and focus, so that by the end of a day one feels that she or he accomplished something. 

Profiles I wrote all revealed different gods, but I especially liked the attitudes of two artists.

DECEMBER 9, 1961

"The métier of Kurelek

"TORONTO -- William Kurelek is an artist not concerned whether there is art in his work. He lets that 'take care of itself' as he paints in a simply furnished bachelor's room on Toronto's Huron St. 'If there is art in me it will come out in my paintings,' he says, and concentrates on expressing his Faith. 'My conversion from atheism to the Catholic Faith was the best thing that ever happened to me. It has given my life meaning, direction and a measure of happiness.' Most of his works, intense in their simplicity and precise details, record spiritual experiences before and after his conversion in England in 1957.

"PRIOR TO his conversion, Mr. Kurelek painted 'Lord That I May See,' which recalls the blind man who met Christ on the road to Jericho, and 'Behold Man Without God.' Since 1957 he has produced a self-portrait recording various influences in his life and has been working on a series [of 160 scenes] depicting the Passion of Christ according to St. Matthew.

"Since his return from England in 1959 he has lived in Toronto. He is associated with the Isaacs Gallery on Yonge St., and had a one-man exhibition there in 1960. More recently, his 'Hailstorm in Alberta' was hung in Toronto's Art Gallery and subsequently bought by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. His 'Ubi caritas et amor' in the library of Toronto's Catholic Information Centre depicts the peaceful unity of all mankind around a tabernacle.

"He works as a picture framer four days a week to earn 'enough to live on' and to buy painting supplies. Loss of time from his art does not bother him because his eyes become strained with constant painting.

"BORN IN 1927 on an Alberta farm, William Kurelek is of Ukrainian descent. He received a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Manitoba in 1949 and then attended the Ontario College of Art. In 1951 he spent five months on a scholarship at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel, Mexico, and the following year went to England to learn 'simply by painting.' Examples of his work were hung for each of three successive years at the Royal Academy Summer Show. 

"The good example of a Catholic friend prompted Mr. Kurelek to investigate the Church. After four years, he was baptized. He resolved then to paint the Passion series and spent five weeks in the Holy Land doing research for it. Mr. Kurelek's religious paintings are supplemented by still lifes and works which recall his childhood on the Prairies.

"He is preparing a collection of boyhood farm memories for an exhibit next February. The show will bring him some money and 'get the memories off my mind so I can get down to some real work.' He would like to paint a symbolic series on the seven deadly sins, to point out the actuality of sin in the 20th Century, the fact that billboards even recommend sins, and that the devil is today more clever than ever.