Craig
Campbell - Painting the Past
By Sally Hansen
Even
though Perth artist Craig Campbell understands why singers
like Paul Anka and Dinah Shore and Patty Page recorded new
arrangements of their biggest hits, he really wishes they
hadn't. Campbell takes his nostalgia seriously and prizes
his remembrances of his favourite decades - the 1940s and
'50s. Time marches on, but Craig Campbell has fashioned
a successful and personally rewarding career out of recreating
scenes from the past. Since 1971 he has sold over 1,000
paintings and drawings and completed more than three dozen
commissioned murals in a highly realistic and nostalgic
fashion that instantly conjures up fond memories of Norman
Rockwell images on the front of the Saturday Evening Post.
Campbell readily acknowledges Rockwell as his primary inspiration,
but Rockwell's forte was his gift for portraying character
and emotion in the faces and body language of the people
he painted. Campbell has a gift for capturing the atmosphere
of a bygone era by portraying its artefacts, from jukeboxes
to trains to buildings to dairy farms. You don't have to
be a local "old-timer" to enjoy his paintings
of the train pulling into the Smiths Falls Railroad Station
or the Perth Railroad Station circa 1900.
Making Tracks
Trains are a recurring theme in Campbell's work. Disenchanted
with the business world, he moved to Toronto in 1971 to
"do what I always wanted to do - paint," and quickly
became known as the "Railroad Artist." He had
worked for CPR as a computing specialist for 13 years, and
decided to depict his industrial environment from the nostalgic
perspective he preferred.
Craig's work is realistic. When he showed me a picture of
a jukebox that he painted on a client's refrigerator, I
thought it was a photo of a Wurlitzer jukebox. He believes
his talent for realistic representation was "in the
genes." His uncle was a photographer, his father drew,
and he and his three brothers all had artistic proclivities.
He attended the College of Beaux Arts in Montreal where
he grew up, and his hobby was always drawing and painting.
Campbell eventually moved to Ottawa for a year, then to
Smiths Falls for six years, and settled in Perth in 1987.
He likes the area and values the community spirit of small
towns where people are friendly and everyone knows each
other. He is an active member of those communities. In Smiths
Falls he was programming director for Cable 10, and when
he moved to Perth he served on Council where he had responsibility
for police and fire services. (Consistent with his penchant
for nostalgia, he subsequently collected over 300 miniature
police cars.) He has been a columnist for papers in both
Smiths Falls and Perth; he wrote the Perth Police Youth
Mystery (Internet) Challenge; and for five years he published
a whimsical newsletter put out by a local pub.
Off the Beaten Track
Craig Campbell's original paintings have garnered an impressive
collection of international art awards. When he received
the Toronto Archives Award, his winning painting was featured
on the front page of the Toronto Star, and in 1980 he received
the Ottawa Silver Cup for best painting at an art exhibition
at Ottawa City Hall. After collecting another twenty awards
in shows all over southern Ontario and northern New York
in the 70s, he retired from doing shows until he joined
the Perth Farmer's Market last year.
Today Campbell relies on commissioned paintings of people's
homes and commissioned murals for corporate, public and
private spaces to pay the bills. He likes a challenge. He
has painted motor homes, garage doors, fences, a station
wagon, interior walls, and that Wurlitzer jukebox on the
refrigerator. Personally, I can't wait to get out to the
Hershey Chocolate Shoppe and Visitor's Centre in Smiths
Falls to see his 60-foot-long mural depicting dairy farms
of different eras.
Beat a Track…
…to these images to
see why you should make tracks to Perth any Saturday morning
between Mother's Day weekend and Thanksgiving weekend to
meet Craig Campbell and see his work at the Perth Farmer's
Market (www.urbanmarket.com/all-about-perth/fmarket.html).
If you're interested in commissioning an original painting
of your house or cottage or farm or store, bring along some
photos. Or dream up an exciting mural commission worthy
of this artist's impressive talents and interesting enough
to challenge him - let me know if you do!
Several of his original paintings are on display at urbanMarket
at 40 Gore St. East in Perth, and he has a website at www.urbanmarket.com/all-about-perth/craig/.
He can be reached by phone at 267-4468 and by email at craigcampbell78@msn.com.
