NATURE

Siegfried Blum

November 2012

For decades, Siegfried Blum has captured impressions of Grey-Bruce landscapes and forests with layered and blended chalk pastels. With a photo-realistic attention to details of colour, shape and space, he evokes the power of the natural world.

Blum enjoys the immediacy and versatility of pastels, its enormous range of colours, its permanence and non-fade qualities, its intrinsic beauty. Blum's unique style with pastels illustrates the medium's flexibility and range, as he depicts both the fine detail of a grassy field and the subtlety of cloud shadows sweeping across a landscape. His work is indicative of two of his primary preoccupations: the many faces of southern Ontario landscapes, and the technical challenge of representing those landscapes with loving accuracy and fidelity. The resulting body of work is redolent with atmosphere and beauty, rendered with an impressive technical mastery. Experience tranquility and contemplation when engaging with the quiet power of Siegfried Blum's art.

Born in 1930 in Germany, Siegfried Blum studied commercial art at the Kunsthochschule Karlsruhe and was subsequently employed by the U.S. Army to design training posters after World War II. After arriving in Canada in 1952, he began a lengthy career as a graphic artist at Templeton Studios. During his years in advertising, he began to create abstract landscapes. Blum has exhibited in Mississauga, Owen Sound, Flesherton, Neustadt, Durham and Walkerton. His paintings can be found in private collections in Canada and Germany.