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It all started with pencil drawings of Chicago Blackhawks netminder Tony Esposito sketched obsessively on notebooks and page margins.
Tony Harris was then a Grade 3 student at Lakefield District Public School near Peterborough, and like many boys of his era, he found in Esposito an artist’s muse: He made countless attempts at perfecting the goalie’s half-moon mask; the coiled tension of his crouch; the black tape on his Northland stick.
This year, Harris — now a celebrated Ottawa artist — returned to his old subject matter as part of a massive commission from the National Hockey League: to paint portraits of the NHL’s 100 all-time greatest players during its centennial year.
Tony Esposito was voted one of the league’s best, and earlier this year, Harris spent three days recreating the goalie’s butterfly stance.
“Although I drew him constantly as a kid, I had never done a full painting of Espo,” said Harris, 53. “So it was a fun couple of days: There were a lot of good memories.’
Painting of former Chicago Blackhawks Tony Esposito by Tony Harris.
Esposito even called him and explained how painful goaltending was back in the 1970s when pads were thin, and face masks only blunted the trauma of an NHL slapshot.
“That’s one of the coolest things that happened in this whole thing: having a chat with my boyhood idol,” says Harris, a father of two married to former CTV Morning host Lianne Laing.
In mid-November, Harris completed his epic NHL commission when he put the finishing touches on the final piece: a portrait of all-time scoring leader Wayne Gretzky.
“It was pretty anticlimactic,” Harris says of the moment. “I got it done and I took my daughter to soccer practice. I was walking around in a daze for a couple of days. I cleaned the garage.”
Painting of former Edmonton Oiler Wayne Gretzky by Tony Harris.
All of Harris’ paintings will be on display at the Aberdeen Pavilion later this month during the outdoor game festivities as the Ottawa Senators play the Montreal Canadiens at Lansdowne Park on Dec. 16.
For Harris, it brings to an end what he calls his “groundhog year.”
“It has really been wake up, paint, wake up, paint, wake up, paint,” he says.
The commission began last November after the NHL approached him with the idea of painting one large canvass with all of its greatest players. Harris worried that such a format would favour some players over others, and he proposed 100 small portraits (10” x 14”) instead. The NHL agreed.
Harris’ work was well known in hockey circles. His portrait of the late Roger Neilson, a longtime coach and hockey innovator, is featured in many league offices. He has also done dozens of commissions for NHL players and teams, including at least 10 portraits for the Ottawa Senators to mark career milestones.
Before hockey, there was golf.
Harris began his full-time career as an artist — he left teaching — when he recognized that he could make a living by painting golf courses. He would go to trade shows across North America to offer his services beside other representatives selling golf balls, clubs and shoes.
“I became the guy who painted a signature hole for private golf clubs: It was a great market,” he says. Clubs would hang the original on the clubhouse wall and sell prints to members. He travelled to 15 or 20 golf courses each year.
Harris, an accomplished junior goalie, broke into the NHL as an artist through connections he had made as an instructor at Roger Neilson’s hockey camp in Peterborough.
He moved to Ottawa from Montreal after meeting Laing at a local gym; they married in June 2002 and now have two girls, 9 and 12.
Harris paints in a bright studio in the basement of their Barrhaven home, surrounded by athletes’ portraits and golf vistas.
When he began work on the NHL’s 100 greatest, Harris says, he couldn’t think about the enormity of his task. “If I thought about all the hours involved, I would actually panic and not sleep.”
He experimented with painting all the faces first, then the equipment, and grouping them by team in order to maximize his efficiency. Each painting required between 20 and 30 hours of labour, and he ultimately discovered there was no shortcut to be found.
“When it came down to it,” he remembers, “it was just as long as I’m painting, then it’s going to get done.”
In each case, Harris began by finding a photograph that best captured the player at the height of his career. He looked for pictures that he could build upon: ones that he could embroider with emotion and movement.
Painting of Pittsburgh Penguin captain Sidney Crosby by Tony Harris.
“There are photographs that are great photos that should stay as photos,” he explains, “and there are other that you see and say, ‘I can turn that into a really good painting.’”
Sometimes, he altered the images in subtle ways. He added a “C” to the jersey of a young Gordie Howe because it just felt right; for Washington’s Mike Gartner, he added a Standfield’s undershirt to cover the “almost disturbing” amount of chest hair that extruded from his sweater. At defenceman Brad Park’s request, he put laces on the collar of his Bruins sweater.
Every week, he had to produce two paintings so they could be posted on the NHL.com website.
Harris associates each of the portraits with whatever he was listening to or watching on Netflix at the time: Whenever he sees Canadiens great Bill Durnan, he thinks of Mindhunter; goalie Jacques Plante brings to mind Led Zeppelin IV.
Painting of former Montreal Canadiens goaltender Bill Durnan by Tony Harris.
As an “old goalie” himself, Harris holds a soft spot for all his netminder portraits, including Esposito. “A lot of that equipment is just so familiar to me,” he says.
With his year-long commission now complete, Harris is at work on a large portrait of Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid to mark his selection as the 2017 Ted Lindsay Award winner. Says Harris: “It’s nice to have a deadline that’s two months away as opposed to 25 hours away.”
Painting of former Ottawa Senator Daniel Alfredsson by Tony Harris. (Note: This portrait of Alfredsson was completed independently from Harris’ recent commission from the NHL to paint portraits of the league’s 100 all-time greatest players.)
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Tony Harris was then a Grade 3 student at Lakefield District Public School near Peterborough, and like many boys of his era, he found in Esposito an artist’s muse: He made countless attempts at perfecting the goalie’s half-moon mask; the coiled tension of his crouch; the black tape on his Northland stick.
This year, Harris — now a celebrated Ottawa artist — returned to his old subject matter as part of a massive commission from the National Hockey League: to paint portraits of the NHL’s 100 all-time greatest players during its centennial year.
Tony Esposito was voted one of the league’s best, and earlier this year, Harris spent three days recreating the goalie’s butterfly stance.
“Although I drew him constantly as a kid, I had never done a full painting of Espo,” said Harris, 53. “So it was a fun couple of days: There were a lot of good memories.’
Painting of former Chicago Blackhawks Tony Esposito by Tony Harris.
Esposito even called him and explained how painful goaltending was back in the 1970s when pads were thin, and face masks only blunted the trauma of an NHL slapshot.
“That’s one of the coolest things that happened in this whole thing: having a chat with my boyhood idol,” says Harris, a father of two married to former CTV Morning host Lianne Laing.
In mid-November, Harris completed his epic NHL commission when he put the finishing touches on the final piece: a portrait of all-time scoring leader Wayne Gretzky.
“It was pretty anticlimactic,” Harris says of the moment. “I got it done and I took my daughter to soccer practice. I was walking around in a daze for a couple of days. I cleaned the garage.”
Painting of former Edmonton Oiler Wayne Gretzky by Tony Harris.
All of Harris’ paintings will be on display at the Aberdeen Pavilion later this month during the outdoor game festivities as the Ottawa Senators play the Montreal Canadiens at Lansdowne Park on Dec. 16.
For Harris, it brings to an end what he calls his “groundhog year.”
“It has really been wake up, paint, wake up, paint, wake up, paint,” he says.
The commission began last November after the NHL approached him with the idea of painting one large canvass with all of its greatest players. Harris worried that such a format would favour some players over others, and he proposed 100 small portraits (10” x 14”) instead. The NHL agreed.
Harris’ work was well known in hockey circles. His portrait of the late Roger Neilson, a longtime coach and hockey innovator, is featured in many league offices. He has also done dozens of commissions for NHL players and teams, including at least 10 portraits for the Ottawa Senators to mark career milestones.
Before hockey, there was golf.
Harris began his full-time career as an artist — he left teaching — when he recognized that he could make a living by painting golf courses. He would go to trade shows across North America to offer his services beside other representatives selling golf balls, clubs and shoes.
“I became the guy who painted a signature hole for private golf clubs: It was a great market,” he says. Clubs would hang the original on the clubhouse wall and sell prints to members. He travelled to 15 or 20 golf courses each year.
Harris, an accomplished junior goalie, broke into the NHL as an artist through connections he had made as an instructor at Roger Neilson’s hockey camp in Peterborough.
He moved to Ottawa from Montreal after meeting Laing at a local gym; they married in June 2002 and now have two girls, 9 and 12.
Harris paints in a bright studio in the basement of their Barrhaven home, surrounded by athletes’ portraits and golf vistas.
When he began work on the NHL’s 100 greatest, Harris says, he couldn’t think about the enormity of his task. “If I thought about all the hours involved, I would actually panic and not sleep.”
He experimented with painting all the faces first, then the equipment, and grouping them by team in order to maximize his efficiency. Each painting required between 20 and 30 hours of labour, and he ultimately discovered there was no shortcut to be found.
“When it came down to it,” he remembers, “it was just as long as I’m painting, then it’s going to get done.”
In each case, Harris began by finding a photograph that best captured the player at the height of his career. He looked for pictures that he could build upon: ones that he could embroider with emotion and movement.
Painting of Pittsburgh Penguin captain Sidney Crosby by Tony Harris.
“There are photographs that are great photos that should stay as photos,” he explains, “and there are other that you see and say, ‘I can turn that into a really good painting.’”
Sometimes, he altered the images in subtle ways. He added a “C” to the jersey of a young Gordie Howe because it just felt right; for Washington’s Mike Gartner, he added a Standfield’s undershirt to cover the “almost disturbing” amount of chest hair that extruded from his sweater. At defenceman Brad Park’s request, he put laces on the collar of his Bruins sweater.
Every week, he had to produce two paintings so they could be posted on the NHL.com website.
Harris associates each of the portraits with whatever he was listening to or watching on Netflix at the time: Whenever he sees Canadiens great Bill Durnan, he thinks of Mindhunter; goalie Jacques Plante brings to mind Led Zeppelin IV.
Painting of former Montreal Canadiens goaltender Bill Durnan by Tony Harris.
As an “old goalie” himself, Harris holds a soft spot for all his netminder portraits, including Esposito. “A lot of that equipment is just so familiar to me,” he says.
With his year-long commission now complete, Harris is at work on a large portrait of Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid to mark his selection as the 2017 Ted Lindsay Award winner. Says Harris: “It’s nice to have a deadline that’s two months away as opposed to 25 hours away.”
Painting of former Ottawa Senator Daniel Alfredsson by Tony Harris. (Note: This portrait of Alfredsson was completed independently from Harris’ recent commission from the NHL to paint portraits of the league’s 100 all-time greatest players.)
查看原文...
