Alma Duncan

Alma Mary Duncan (October 2, 1917 – December 15, 2004 ) was a Canadian painter, graphic artist, and filmmaker from Paris, Ontario. A prolific artist working in a variety of mediums including charcoal, chalk pastel, ink, watercolour, oil paint, puppetry, and film, Duncan's style evolved drastically over the course of her career to include portraiture, precise representational drawings, machine aesthetic, and abstraction.

Early life

Alma Duncan was born in the southern Ontario town of Paris, but attended high school in Hamilton, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec. where she studied Political Economy. Duncan continued to take life-drawing and portraiture courses in this early stage of her career with Ernst Neumann at the Roberts-Neumann School of Art, which was located in the same building as the commercial art studio, as well as with Goodridge Roberts at the Art Association of Montreal.

War work

In 1943, the same year she served as treasurer of the Writers', Artists' and Broadcasters' War Council in Montreal, These drawings of machinery sparked Alma's ongoing interest in industrial subject matter, even inspiring her to take leave to draw industrial subjects around Ontario in 1947, while she was working in the animation department at the National Film Board.

Film work

In 1943, the National Film Board of Canada invited Montreal-based Duncan to join its Graphics Division. She worked first with the Information Display department, It was nominated for a BAFTA award in 1954 as a documentary film. They produced two other films, Hearts and Soles (1955), which used the same animation techniques as Kumak, and Friendly Interchange (1959), which was made with chalk drawings.

Though the production company never disbanded, it became inactive after 1960.

Mid-career Duncan began experimenting with abstraction in the 1960s, with her Woman Series which deconstructed the female figure through circular forms. Works from this series appeared in the exhibition Canadian Water Colours, Drawings and Prints 1966 at the National Gallery of Canada and then circulated across Canada, as well as appearing in international exhibitions and collections such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Canada Council Art Bank, and Museum London. Her work coincided with and reflects the sexual liberation of second wave feminism, though she did not explicitly identify as a feminist at the time. Duncan produced her "dot" series of pen-and-ink drawings of celestial bodies using simple circular forms the same year as her Woman Series. In 1966, amid her exploration of abstraction, Duncan joined the Canadian Society of Graphic Art.

Duncan was particularly fascinated by the works of Painters Eleven as well as the Abstract Expressionists, both influencing her abstract works, seen in her 1967 series of paintings expressing pure colour and form.

Canada Post

In 1970, Canada Post commissioned Alma Duncan to design stamps. She produced the series Maple Leaf in Four Seasons (released in 1971) and the series Floral Aerogrammes (released in 1973). Her "Autumn" stamp from the Maple Leaf in Four Seasons series was selected as the stamp of the month by the Scott Monthly Journal, a periodical from the creators of the Scott catalogue that commented on stamps worldwide.

Later life

From 1960 until her death, most of Alma Duncan's time was devoted to her painting and drawing, much of it done on location near her home outside of Cumberland, Ontario.

Duncan also taught at various points in her career including teaching the course "Visual Presentation of Ideas" at Laval University and at Macdonald College in Quebec, lectures on "The Art of Animation" at the Advertising Club in Montreal and later to the National Gallery Association, a three-year teaching position in painting and drawing at the Ottawa Municipal Art Centre (now the Ottawa School of Art), painting and drawing courses at the Rockcliffe Public School Art Club, and a lecture on "The Art of Collage" to the National Gallery Association.

Alma died on December 15, 2004, after living with Alzheimer's disease for nearly ten years.

Awards British Academy Film Awards;