(1933-2013)
Located on Regina Five wall, above Golden Prairie Confections (Dr. William Riddell Centre, viewable from 1st and 2nd floors)
Copyright the Estate of Ted Godwin. Reproduced with the permission of Phyllis Godwin. Photograph by the University of Regina.
A Fine Fall, 1970
Oil on canvas
105” x 100″
University of Regina President’s Art Collection. Gift of Ted and Phyllis Godwin; pc.2003.5
Ted Godwin was a professor at the University of Regina from 1964 until his retirement in 1985. It was while he was a faculty member that he created his most distinguished works, the Tartan series. Godwin’s works were among those of the May Show (1961), an exhibition at the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery, which eventually led to the Five Painters From Regina (1961) exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada and toured Canada giving the Regina Five national attention.
While Godwin settled on the title of his Tartan series, he preferred to think of them as “serial colour interweaves”. The Tartans are comprehensive grids, painted with a large roller with alternating bands of opaque and transparent colors that overlap and interweave together. These paintings contain a fluidity; the colours weave together, occupying a precarious position between controlled and loose movements, orderly and impulsive expressions. A Fine Fall seems to float within the picture frame, grounded only by casual strokes interacting with the edge of the painting. For Godwin, these Tartans are in a constant state of change and can be analyzed in many different ways by the viewers. This is reinforced in A Fine Fall, by the translucent state of the paint and the small interruptions of order. Like tool marks left behind by his brush, the interruptions bring impulsivity and life into a structured space.