Harold Klunder, Pipe Dreams, 1994 – 1995. Oil on burlap, 81 x 71.5 cm. Collection of the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Owen Sound. Gift from the artist, 1998.

Harold Klunder: The Dance of Life

January 24, 2026 – April 18, 2026
Opening Reception: January 24, 2 – 4pm

Harold Klunder’s process mirrors the cycles of life itself: paintings are born, built, torn apart, and rebuilt through layers of gesture, accumulation, revision, and time. Often painted over the course of several years, these works hover between abstraction and figuration, shaped as much by intuition as by lived experience. Since 1980, Klunder has used figuration—particularly the self-portrait—as a touchstone for exploring the inner psyche and the collective unconscious. His paintings pulse with dissonant, jazz-like rhythms and are structured by an underlying compositional architecture, holding beauty and darkness, chaos and order, joy and anguish, in a provocative tension that reflects the full spectrum of human experience.

The Dance of Life brings together paintings from more than seven decades of Klunder’s fervent and deeply committed practice, placing works created decades apart in conversation with one another through key loans and selections from the Gallery’s collection. Rather than following a linear chronological narrative, the exhibition presents his career as a living continuum, where past and present continually inform one another, revealing a vision that moves forward while remaining self-referential and deeply authentic.

Tom Thomson, April in Algonquin, c. 1917. Oil on wood panel. Collection of the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Owen Sound. Gift from George Thomson, brother of Tom Thomson, to the Grey County Historical and Art Society, 1964. Transferred to the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, 1967.

Forecast – January to June

January 24, 2026 – June 20, 2026
Opening Reception: January 24, 2 – 4 pm

“There are four seasons in the world, but there are only two in my mind—painting and no-painting.” – Tom Thomson in a journal entry, March 18, 1917

During the final spring of his career, Tom Thomson created a remarkable series of sketches in Algonquin Park that served as a visual diary of the season unfolding. His friend and fellow artist, Mark Robinson, recalled that Thomson referred to these works as his “records,” documenting the daily shifts in weather and landscape—from fog drifting across the lake at dawn, to the sudden shimmer of sunlight on birch bark, or the slow deepening of twilight over pine-covered ridges. This attentiveness exemplified his approach to the early twentieth-century landscape: not as static scenery, but as a living system in flux, with plein-air sketches recording changes in light, temperature, and atmosphere.

Building from Thomson’s devotion to observing these elements, Forecast extends this focus into the present through the concept of bioclimatic attunement—our bodily and emotional responsiveness to the atmosphere and the subtle ways we sense and adapt to weather. In addition to Thomson’s work, a salon-style hanging of selections from the Gallery’s collection traces the progression of the seasons in step with the exhibition running dates. Visitors are invited to tune their perceptions to the rhythms of changing skies and light. Situating us within the present, we are also compelled to consider how our awareness of familiar weather patterns—and their disruption—has evolved in a changing climate.

For more information about our current exhibitions, please visit our website.

About Tom Thomson Art Gallery

The Tom Thomson Art Gallery develops exhibitions and programs that enrich the region and contribute to national visual arts discourse. We promote and support emerging and professional artists, advocate for the creative sector, and actively research, preserve, develop, and exhibit the collection to promote scholarship and to generate and explore new ideas. We are committed to welcoming and inspiring people of all representations, ages, backgrounds, and abilities.

Tom Thomson Art Gallery
840 1st Avenue West
Owen Sound, ON N4K 4K4
www.tomthomson.org
ttag@tomthomson.org
519-376-1932

Facebook @tomthomsonartgallery
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Gallery Hours:
Tuesday to Saturday: 10:00am – 5:00pm
Sunday to Monday: Closed

Accessibility:
Tom Thomson Art Gallery is fully accessible. For more information, please visit our website.

The Tom Thomson Art Gallery operates with generous support from the City of Owen Sound, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council.