Biographies > Bert Weir

When Bert Weir was discharged from the armed services in 1946, he went to work in the bush camps. He tried some drawings, but he felt he needed training. He visited the Art Gallery of Toronto (AGO) and asked a guard how a person became an artist. The guard instructed him to go around the corner to the art school. At Ontario College of Art (now OCAD), the secretary took Bert to see Fred Haines, principal at the time. Haines asked to see his portfolio; Weir said it was in Parry Sound, where he was working. After he found out what a portfolio was, he hitchhiked to Parry Sound. There he bought paper and watercolours in the drugstore and made three watercolours from nature. Then he hitchhiked back to Toronto and showed the work to Haines who said, “O.K. I’ve seen worse”.

In 1973, Weir and his wife Elena established Loon Studios in Parry Sound, where he had begun his painting career twenty years before. Each day, as a warm up he does four watercolour studies from nature.1 TAG has an oil on canvas entitled Wave Series.

1. Partly from www.bertweir.com/