About the Artist

Living in Northern Ontario near the Quebec border, Jon Tobin grew up amongst a landscape and people who are deeply representative of both traditional Canadian heritages. French and English meet in a place that is wild and rugged, always changing, and yet largely untouched by human demands.  Watching highly skilled craftsmen create beautiful sleigh harnesses and other quality hand-built pieces in the old ways gave Tobin a unique perspective on how art and life intersect in traditional cultures. The French Canadian  film   ''My Oncle Antoine''  is a story, a film and a setting  the artist can identify with as Tobin's childhood was very similar to that of  the boy in the film. The severe winter in a small village were the child experiences the death of another child and the problems surrounding  removing the body in winter.  He also discovers  the appealing sexuality of women during this long winter. The child's responsibilities become adult in nature.

Educated at the University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph, Tobin uses traditional materials to create paintings that have both longevity and luminosity. Colours are applied in a glazing technique similar to that used by the Old Masters. Reminiscent of Ozias Leduc’s work, Tobin’s paintings are spiritual in theme, using landscapes and portraits to explore and address our sacred connection to the natural world.  

Currently working  in Northern Ontario and the Kitchener area, Tobin creates scenes that are suffused with atmosphere. Tobin’s landscapes vibrate with movement, instilling a sense of constant change and the energy of nature. The drama of dawn and dusk often sets the mood, evoking an impression of humanity’s limited ability--moving through nature without truly controlling it.  

Paintings of Algonquin vibrate with colour and spiritual awareness, reflecting Tobin’s own interest in delving beneath the surface of a scene to interpret the responses that nature evokes in our most primitive selves. More urban scenes also retain a feeling of the primacy of nature using moments of change, such as dawn or dusk, to remind us that as we move through the world, a larger, more universal movement is also occurring. 

Tobin’s works have been sold to collectors from around the world including Brad Garrett, from the television series Everybody Loves Raymond. Paintings are available through Willow Gallery in Toronto, annually at the One of a Kind Show, Toronto, and at Tobin’s Kitchener studio. Portrait and Landscape commissions  are also accepted.  Please contact artist's studio or Willow Gallery Toronto for more information and pricing.






Kitchener artist follows own path
ROBERT REID
Figure and Winter Landscape, acrylic painting by Jon Tobin, is on display

at the Homer Watson Gallery in the Doon area of Kitchener.
.
(Jun 10, 2006)
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Kitchener artist Jon Tobin is deliberately
unfashionable.

This is one of his greatest strengths as an artist who, like

the narrator in Robert Frost's poem about the road not

taken, follows his own artistic path.

This unfashionability  which has nothing to do with
being old-fashioned -- not only makes Tobin's work unique, it speaks to his integrity and conviction
at a time when artists all too frequently surrender to the marketplace.
A modest exhibition of 11 of Tobin's works is on view through Aug. 13 at the Homer
Watson Gallery, along with an exhibition of skyscapes by fellow Kitchener artist Norma
McDonald and the gallery's annual tribute exhibition to its namesake.
Although he would likely shudder at the label, Tobin can be described as a postmodernist. He
employs the earth-tones, brooding atmosphere and glazing technique similar to the Old Masters, but
there is nothing outdated or derivative about his landscapes and figure paintings. His work has a
freshness which is no weaker for being subtle.
The exhibition's title, Ethereal Properties of Landscape, accurately conveys Tobin's artistic
intentions, which are evident in the works themselves.
His luxurious paintings are a pleasure to behold. They are beautiful in ways that gallery goers would
recognize and appreciate prior to the revolution in the visual arts that accompanied 19th century
French Impressionism.
Notwithstanding how one defines or responds to the tactile beauty of his paintings, Tobin is not
primarily concerned with surface appearances -- either in art or in life.
Rather, his preoccupation is with the spiritual correspondences between humanity and nature. He
attempts to give expression to these correspondences by penetrating surface appearances to reveal
an inner, metaphysical reality that transcends time and place.
Tobin's paintings are representational, but they are not to be read literally. Many are inspired by
local landmarks -- the Grand River, Victoria Park, Columbus Lake, Mount Pleasant Cemetery. But
even viewers familiar with these places would have difficulty recognizing them.
Tobin is not interested in painting identifiable scenes, but in painting landscapes and figures that
evoke feeling and/or the nude woman could just as easily have been painted a century ago as
yesterday.
Similarly, there is a strong impulse toward idealization. His pastoral landscapes are both ideal and
idyll.
Tobin's paintings are best read metaphorically, as suggested by the title of his painting of a nude
woman -- The Poet and the Landscape -- which shows a ghostly white woman lying down in what
seems to be a cave, with its many symbolic associations.
Similarly, Figure and Winter Landscape shows a man with his back to the viewer entering a small
clearing in thick woods from a snowy field. The emotion evoked by this wonderfully mysterious
painting brings to mind Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.