The St. Albert painter who has spent almost three decades of his artistic career capturing the sights of significant people and places in his beloved images has never tackled one important landmark. That is until now and just in time too before the landscape changes.
Alan Nuttall, the self-described naïve realist whose entire portfolio could be described as a historical record of the city, has just unveiled his portrait of Hole’s Greenhouse on the occasion of the beginning of its last growing season in its original location. Once the agricultural operation finishes with its peak summer business, it will be packing up and moving to its new building at the south of Riel Business Park.
Most people in St. Albert are familiar with Nuttall’s whimsically styled watercolour images that have an incredible amount of fine detail while occasionally compressing and distorting geography. Sometimes it seems like he has mapped out the entire city, even though he focuses on areas of public and historical significance like downtown during the summer festival and farmers’ market season or Grain Elevator Park.
“I like living here and I’m quite proud of the city,” the British-born artist said. He doesn’t necessarily feel like it’s his job to capture everything popular and recognizable but when he thought of how Hole’s has served the community since the mid-1970s — the last 30 of which at its current site — and how important and iconic it became to the growth of St. Albert as a whole, he just figured the time had come.
His painting, entitled In the Land of ‘Queen of Hugs’, shows an aerial view of the entire operation on what appears to be a somewhat busy day, with a fine contingent of gardening enthusiasts milling about, minus the overflow of cars in the parking lot. The scene overlooks the river valley but there’s one person in the foreground that casts a long shadow, even though we don’t see her face. It’s no secret that St. Albert loved Lois Hole as its honorary mother. We only see her back in Nuttall’s picture but she’s just as recognizable for her skirt and hair colour as she is for the wondrous hug she’s giving to a small child.
He proposed the picture to current manager Val Hole, wife of Lois and Ted Hole’s son Bill, who graciously purchased the original. While prints of In the Land are already on sale at Hole’s for $85, Nuttall has 150 copies of limited edition unframed prints available at his home gallery. They are 38 cm x 46 cm (15” x 18”) and will cost $240 each. He has pledged to donate a portion of the proceeds to the newly opened Lois Hole Hospital for Women. Call at 780-459-0964 for more information.
