Art Success: Adelaide Damoah in Conversation with Harold Klunder

Adelaide Damoah (AD): I read that you were born in the Netherlands in 1943 and that you and your family moved to Canada when you were just nine years old. Why Canada?

Harold Klunder (HK): Well my father got to know Canadian soldiers during the war and he was in the underground in Holland. After the war– during the war particularly, things were poor. I had six brothers and three sisters. My dad was concerned about conscription because the Korean war was on at the time- in the 1950’s. He wanted to get everyone out and he didn’t have much empathy or sympathy with any concept of war. He was always trying to help people and did not really believe in all of that. I think that is how we ended up in Canada. It seemed like there was a possible future there, better than in Holland. Although we had our own farm over there, during the war, we were unable to grow anything because of the constant bombing. We lived underground during the war. Not underground in the modern sense!

AD: Physically underground?

HK: Yes. And that was my initial beginning. I saw no light in the first three years of my life. I was born in 43′, during the war and it ended in 45′ as you probably know. I think Holland was heavily hit just because it was directly beside Germany and I think that is why my father got really interested in being in the underground. He couldn’t understand how his neighbours could be so cruel. Taking food away and radios… From years of living side by side, to have this oppressive thing happening was too much for him and for lots of people.

AD: You studied at the Central Technical School in Toronto?

HK: Yes, that’s right. Those kind of schools are less popular now, but it’s kind of like the Slade school where you are not learning how to think so much, but you are more involved in the actual workings of things like how to use a brush, how to mix colour, how to see colour and that kind of thing. It was actually quite a good, old fashioned or traditional education. It wasn’t like a university course, so less academic I suppose and more just the workings of being a painter- which I appreciate because I think that kind of education is rare now.

AD: It is.

HK: Yes. I don’t really believe that it’s going the right way because I think that it is almost a form of censorship to tell artists what they should be thinking like or what the relevant issues are or anything like that. I have always felt totally free to do anything I wish as an artist and not be told that this is not appropriate. I sort of formed opinions from very early on that freedom was really what art was all about.

AD: What made you decide to study painting?

HK: From a very early age I was interested in drawing and my family were very sports oriented. I was never particularly athletic, I was not really interested in that. I was more interested in culture in general . Not to be cultured, but to look at paintings and listen to music. I was drawing from when I was eight or nine. So when I came to Canada, I was already drawing. I didn’t know quite where it was going but then when I was around 13, I just started painting, without knowing what I was doing and with cheap found materials. My parents had a farm in Hamilton which is just over an hour from Toronto. My art school was in Toronto so I left the farm when I was 17 to go to art school, much to my mothers dismay. That was a good choice actually, because I didn’t have any interest in high school. It just seemed like there was a lot of stuff that was in the way of what I really wanted to do. That education was actually very good because it was not really directing me in any way… In some ways, some techniques are directing, but you can forget those kind of things sometimes! I got a rounded education which allowed me to start off doing commercial work. I did some work that was like design work. It was frustrating as hell! But ultimately, I stopped doing that. I started to paint more seriously in the late 60’s. I was doing it half and half because I was doing design work and trying to paint. The two are so opposite that I had a difficult time with that and I just decided at one point to stop everything and just start painting, eat peanut butter sandwiches and not think about the money aspect of it! I have done that ever since. Since the late 60’s, I have been existing on my work and some teaching. I lecture here and there and I also do painting workshops. The teaching is mostly in Canada, but I have done some things in Australia and in Japan.

AD: You had your first solo show in 1976?

HK: Yes that is right. I had one solo show, it may not be on the list. At the University of Toronto I did a print show and that seemed to be the only thing I could get at the time! I was doing mono prints. I didn’t have much money in those years, so a lot of things were done with materials that were not necessarily permanent, but they were spontaneous, so I could do things quickly. I started painting in about 70’, but not really much happened, it was a struggle, which, I guess we all go through. At that point, there was no Canada Council as yet. The Canada Council gives grants to artists and they are actually quite generous, which is a good thing, but its hard to get them. Later I was able to get them but as a young artist, it was difficult.

AD: At what point did you become a full time professional artist existing purely from you art work?

HK: I would say 1972 roughly. Basically, it all started to make sense when I was connected with Jared Sable, one of the owners of the Sable-Costelli Gallery- a very good gallery in Canada. They represented me for over 25 years. It was probably one of the best in Canada at the time. It is no longer, as Jared Sable is retired (now deceased). He was a friend of Leo Costelli who had the famous gallery in New York. That did a real turn for me, because suddenly, people were looking more carefully at my work. And the work was quite rough, because really, the way that I work is quite expressive, so it wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but he took to it, really liked it and promoted it. This made it possible for me to stop doing a lot of other things. But I was still teaching. Partly because I really enjoy teaching and I feel like I get a lot back.

AD: What challenges would you say that you have faced along the way to becoming full time?

HK: Well the challenges were partly to get people to understand the work I think. Teaching was actually really good for me because it taught me to be more articulate about how I present my work and what the work is really all about. I think that some artists find that easier than others. I have always enjoyed talking- not necessarily about my work, but anybodies work and I like looking at work. Even before I was painting actively, I liked looking at paintings. I like museums and I love the whole history of art and its all of real interest to me. I think in part, because I never learned any of it at university, I was largely self taught in terms of art history. I still find that very interesting. If I run out of ideas, its not that books give me ideas but they inspire me to kind of come up to the bat you know? I have never really looked at success as being about money, it is more whether I am realising what I want to realise in the work and hopefully, you make enough money to buy supplies to keep going. It was never my intention to be well off and I am not well off because I put most of what I make back into the work.

I guess I started to be a success in the mid seventies, if you want to call it success, feeling OK about your own work. That is what I am getting at. Success on other levels started to come more and more, but I have never really pursued that in a big way. I suppose I could have, but my first interest has always been to do the work and to feel comfortable with the work and hopefully, that attracts others to the work and that must be different for everyone I am assuming. Some people have a hard time feeling comfortable with the work and they can’t believe the work until they get some kind of reinforcement from dealers or the systems that be or whatever. But I think , given the fact that I am in my late 60’s, my history would be very different than say yours or anyone in their twenties. They would look at it differently because there are so many more artists now than there ever were when I was young. It was unusual to be an artist or even to want to be an artist. Your parents would always say that you would never make any money and that you were crazy and you might as well be a poet or whatever! That was the attitude I grew up with and I guess I assumed I would not make any money and that I would be free. I would not have to be on the freeway at five in the morning, or off to some job where I would have to wear a tie and all that. So the concept of being free was a really important thing to me.

AD: It sounds like your definition of success is more to do with feeling free, feeling comfortable with your work and, knowing and understanding your work and for other people to understand the work, rather than financial success.

HK: Yes, that is true. I mean, I use the money as I make it. Years ago I used to dream about buying a whole roll of canvas which cost $3500 from Belgium. To get coarse, heavy linen. Now I can actually do that. I couldn’t in the past. So to have money coming in is obviously important, but to me, it is not the most important thing.

There are some shows which do well and some shows where nothing happens and usually, I try to judge it by how I feel about the work. Sometimes, the best shows are the ones that don’t do very well! Sometimes, the audience has to catch up, or they see it as some kind of departure, when really, it is not really a departure, it is just part of the same, but maybe people were not ready, or something like that.

Unfortunately, it seems like in the present, many people just equate success with having a gallery and all of that. Even at university, I think there is a large push to get a body of work and then that body of work is supposed to get you a gallery and then sustain you for the rest of your life. But if you are not happy with that body of work, because you have not experimented enough or something, then it is kind of shallow, you know. It has to be something that evolves naturally so that the work can have a life, rather than an idea. It is not a concept as much as your hands speaking to you.

AD: By your definition of success, do you consider yourself to be successful at this point?

HK: Yes I do actually. Of course, my work still has anxiety, so I am not completely satisfied at every turn but for the most part, I feel like I am going in a direction which is directed by me rather than anyone else. So in that sense, I am thrilled at how things have gone. I am a happy painter. Not always though! You have to enjoy the actual making of something as much as finishing it or more than finishing it, because you spend all your time making the work. There are only a few days during which you get to publicly celebrate the finished work. I enjoy painting. I work all the time, night and day sometimes! It seems to have no end.

AD: I read that one of your pieces can take years to complete!

HK: Yes that is right. It just depends on how I feel about the work. Sometimes they are very difficult and sometimes they are more straightforward. I am sure you have experienced the same thing, where sometimes things just click into place and everything seems really good. The next day you try to do the same thing and everything goes wrong. I guess some people would scrap a painting and start again. But for me, they are kind of like my children, so I can’t abandon something that isn’t working. I would rather work through it until it does work. It suits the way I work. For some people, it wouldn’t work. If you were looking for something which was really fresh and clear, obviously, reworking over and over might not make sense.

I kind of like the look of that kind of painting. I particularly like painters like Lucien Freud. People who work with a kind of density of material. Danish painting is a huge influence. Francis Bacon has always been a huge influence, although I work very differently.. It is very heavy, heavy mentally as well I suppose, but on the other hand, I think it really speaks to humanity. It really speaks to our existence in a big way. So basically, there is a struggle in the work, but it is a struggle that… Well, I don’t know if I could say that I enjoy it, but I feel comfortable struggling with it and it doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t work right away. I will put it away and bring it back out later and rework it until I like it.

AD: Many people seem to have this notion of the starving artist. Was that ever your experience?

HK: Well initially I really liked Van Gogh and my mother really liked van Gogh. She had great empathy for his struggle and felt that he was dealt badly with. That made an impression on me, you know, that society is not necessarily kind to people who want to give them something, which I think artists do. They don’t get much return for something that could change all of humanity, some more than others of course. There is something very special about somebody wanting to give their life to something like that. At least that is how I feel. Maybe in the current sense it might be somewhat different because there are so many artists now looking at it differently. There are so many approaches, from conceptual to minimal, to site specific, sculpture, painting.. The traditional things are still in tact and have not changed very much. I feel like I have looked at paintings the way I have always looked at paintings. There is new work included in the looking, but the old masters still look pretty good to me. Maybe we are very distracted in the age we live in.

AD: I think so. Well there is so much to distract us isn’t there.

HK: Yes. And it all seems exciting, for a moment at least.

AD: Yes. Going back to the question, would you say you had that van Gogh experience at all?

HK: No, not really. I don’t feel like I was oppressed. My dad thought I was a dreamer, but my mother was very supportive. I knew how my father would feel, but as things got more successful, he didn’t understand the work, but he understood success in the larger picture of someone actually making money from what they do. I don’t think he ever believed that was going to happen and I don’t think my mother did either, but she was willing to support as this was clearly what I wanted to do. I probably did struggle, but it wasn’t really a miserable terrible life or anything like that. I’m fairly pragmatic as a person, so I deal with things as they come along. If I had to take a job I would. I have done things like pick apples, pick tobacco, I have worked in a steel plant and various other things to get through art school. So in the early 70’s, I did lots of different things. But I never thought of it as hardship or anything! I always found things to do.

AD: That’s a nice attitude to have.

HK: Thank you. When you have expectations it seems to me that you are inevitably going to be disappointed. It is better to just kind of ride it and then hopefully it comes to something. Of course there have been some disappointments, but most of the time, I am comfortable with being an artist.

AD: I read that your work is a non traditional way of approaching the self portrait.

HK: Basically it’s a way of addressing myself, without taking into account how I actually look. It is more the spirit of who I am or what I represent. In a sense, all painting is self portraiture I guess. That is where the feeling started. We are who we are and when we paint, the way we move a brush is who we are. What we decide to do in terms of colour is who we are. So even though the painting might be of someone else, inevitably, yourself is in the painting. I am taking a certain kind of poetic license I suppose by doing this. It confuses some people and they say, “Well how can that be a self portrait?”

I say, “Well if I call it that then it is that!”

I enjoy it, but it also simplifies the whole thing of having to invent titles for everything.

AD: You have paintings in public and private collections globally and have been exhibiting consistently since 1976, what would you say was your biggest success to date?

HK: I sold a large painting to the National Gallery of Canada in 2007. It is eight and a half feet high by 24 feet wide. That was a huge thrill for me, just because it is big and it was something I worked on for a long time. I really did not expect to sell it to the National gallery. That was kind of a thrill.

Also, various trips I have made. I was in a show in Shang Hai with 15 other artists in 2005. Seeing all the buildings going up and seeing where China was going was very timely and very interesting.

Sometimes it’s the little things that are important too. It is not just the bigger things that matter. Sometimes someone will buy a painting that is a total surprise to you and you think, wow, that’s interesting! Or someone might pay active attention to something that you may not have been paying attention to in your own work.

AD: How did the National Gallery sale come about?

HK: Through Clint Roenisch, who was my dealer at the time. He is from Totonto. He is a fantastic dealer, probably the best dealer in Canada. I went there when Sable Costelli closed. He saw the painting when it was sort of two thirds finished and he liked it. At that point, I think he took the initiative, as he did not really talk to me about it. Sometimes dealers don’t want to necessarily involve you in every aspect because they need to work it out first. It was in an exhibition here in Montreal at the Visual Art Centre and when he saw the work, it was sent to Ottawa, to the National Gallery for viewing. The director of the museum, who was the curator wanted it badly so he just decided on the spot that he wanted it. It had to go through the formalities and then it happened. Essentially it was Clint Roenisch who really pushed for it because he felt strongly that it should be in the National Gallery and that was a great thrill for me!

AD: I can imagine! How much did they pay for it if you don’t mind me asking?

HK: It was a lot, six figures.

AD: Wow! How much of that went to the dealer?

HK: It was 50:50. I don’t mind paying that amount. I mean, it was a huge chunk of money. Some artists are well equipped to deal with it all, so they don’t necessarily need a dealer. It is very hard to boost yourself to someone, whereas a dealer is very able to do that for you. I find it hard to talk about my own work in any kind of selling manner. This is what a dealer is paid to do and I am comfortable with that. If they are good at it then it is worth paying the money. I have never had any issue with that part of it because I feel that they are working really hard and they do the wining and dining and courting the collectors and all of that. That is something some artists like to do. I’m not particularly social in that respect. I don’t go to every opening and I don’t try to meet the collectors. Mostly I am in the studio.

AD: Many artists I know complain that a lot of dealers are difficult to get to, especially if you approach them.

HK: That may be the case, but my experience goes way way back. I have the dealers that I want and it is working very well so I don’t have issues with that, but I think it is hard for young artists as it is for young dealers. If you are loyal to your artists its very difficult because you need to take the right artists. I think that makes it really rough for a young artist to get a dealer because you have an idea who your dealer might be, but its not so straight forward because they have to be happy with your work. It has to be a dealer who is keen on your work and then that might work. But if they are not all that keen but you have convinced them, then I am not always sure that works. I keep hearing from young artists that its very tough to get a dealer. You may find a good dealer but they might only represent 15 or so artists and there are thousands of artists. There may be people more deserving who don’t have the kind of personality to get the dealer they deserve. Its not straight forward.

Its almost like going back to that van Gogh story. His own brother could not sell his work when now it sells for over 100 million a painting! It gives hope to people who are struggling. The people who are in power don’t necessarily know what is going on and the very good art is often ahead of the curve, so there are young artists who are brilliant, who deserve more, but for whatever reason… I think often its personality. You know, its how they approach dealers or.. Of course, it is different for each individual . It is very hard to know how to even answer a question like that but I can understand that it is very difficult. Especially in bigger cities. Like in London I am sure it is next to impossible! Same with New York. Canada is somewhat easier, but it is still very difficult. There are a great many artists and very few dealers. There are lots of galleries that are not as good as others. I would say there is a small percentage that are amazing and then there are many galleries that are not that interesting because of what they represent.

AD: Is your price range in the region of what you sold the piece to the National Gallery for?

HK: Yes, well that work is very large and as weird as it is, things are priced according to the scale of the work. A small work is always less than a large work, but its sort of in that range.

AD: That is impressive! What is your ultimate dream for your work?

HK: My ambition is that people are with me on it as I continue. I am going to be 70 soon, so I would like to think I have got 20 years left! I am quite OK with how things are going. It is every artists ambition to somehow be remembered when they go. It is like this thing that hangs in the air and keeps us pushing really hard. I sort of think that if some things don’t happen when you are alive, they may well happen after you are gone. If nothing else, I will have at least reached the point where people will be selling them at yard sales!

AD: They will be going a lot further than that!

HK: When you are young, you just keep thinking, jheez, I’ve got to get my foot somewhere in the door! I have got to keep pushing or else this might not take or something like that. I think I had those feelings as a kid, of wanting to connect. Maybe that was my interest in dealers early on as well. I knew that they were important to my life if I was going to make anything happen. I did not go in with slides or images. I tried to go to openings and saw lots of work before I really pushed myself. It is always interesting for a young artist to go to galleries and talk to these people, not about their own work but in general, so that you can kind of sense what the person is like. Because what happens a lot is that people make choices that are not best for them. You know, because they have not really done their homework in terms of what that dealer is all about and a very good dealer might not necessarily be the person that suits your work. It might be someone else who is better for your work.

AD: What advice would you give to young artists wishing to follow in your footsteps?

HK: Work hard and somehow figure out how to enjoy painting, the actual act of painting. Think of the finished result as just incidental or just a one day thing. Also try to get to know dealers without pushing yourself, in terms of wanting something from them. Get to know them as, maybe not friends, but as acquaintances. People who you can go to when there is an opening, so that you are pushing yourself, but not in an obnoxious way. Maybe I’m speaking from a somewhat naïve position, because maybe its necessary to be obnoxious in the present world! I don’t know but I like to think that is not the case. I mean it is like any other business. If you have an interest in their artists, then they can imagine that you might fit in. but of you don’t even know what artists are represented in someone’s gallery when you are trying to get in there, it makes no sense to the dealer or the artist who wants to be in the gallery. I think mostly, just do the painting. Do the work because that is the most fundamental, important thing to an artist. The rest is by the by. It seems to me that if the work has some energy and is raw or young, there will be an interest if a person pursues and just works hard at it. It doesn’t have to be raw, I’m just using words! But at least a youthful energy is important somehow. That energy could be restrained for one and viciously wild for another.

Harold Klunder is represented by Clint Roenisch