Renowned Canadian artist Tom Forrestall remembers the time he set his sketchbook on the roof of a friend’s car while they cleared off the windshield, only to drive away with the book still on top.
It was never seen again.
Another time, a stranger showed up at his door with a manila envelope containing one of Forrestall’s sketchbooks. The man said he found it at a Salvation Army thrift shop. Forrestall signed the book for him and then asked the man if he wanted to sell it.
“He looked at me and it kind of stopped me in [my] tracks,” said Forrestall. “He said ‘No … it’s one of the few treasures I have in life.'”
For an artist who has more than 400 sketchbooks, it can be hard to keep track of them. Some of them go missing, he said, and turn up later in auctions and other sales.
Now, 100 of these artist journals are on display, under glass, at the Yellow Box Gallery at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. The exhibition was put together by artist and part-time professor William Forrestall — Tom’s eldest son.
“I must say, William deserves all credit for this exhibition, to get it out and have the farsightedness to have these display cases made for it,” said Tom.
William said the sketchbooks go back 70 years, when his father, 86 now, was only 14 or 15 years old.
When it came to working on the exhibit, William had to decide how to properly display them. So he had custom cabinets built to display the notebooks in a “more or less” sequential order. Having the books in that order “reinforces the narrative and development of the work,” William said.
Tom Smart, director of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and author of Tom Forrestall: Paintings, Drawings, Writings, said these sketchbooks show the artist’s development, along with his fears, hopes and aspirations.
“I know that artists keep sketchbooks and journals, but what’s amazing about this set is that it’s continuous,” said Smart.
The sketchbooks tell a story. They also include self portraits, which Smart says shows the change in Forrestall’s appearance as he moves throughout his life.
The Nova Scotia artist “established his early career in New Brunswick; first as a student at Mount Allison University, then as a curator hired by Lord Beaverbrook for his art gallery in Fredericton,” according the the Saint John Arts Centre. The centre hosted the sketchbooks exhibition earlier in the fall.
Forrestall studied under Alex Colville while doing a fine arts degree at Mount Allison. He works in egg tempera and watercolours, mainly, but has also done scultpure.
Father to son, artist to artist
As an artist himself, William said growing up with a well-established painter for a father was great, but “also challenging.”
“I did learn that you have to develop your own vision, your own path. And every artist path is different,” said William.
“Mine was simply just, you know, I watched dad’s career working, and I thought the only thing you can do as an artist is do a lot of work, and have lots of exhibitions and be committed to your work.”
As a visual arts professor, William said this exhibit will be an inspiration to his students. One of the assignments he gives his drawing class to keep a sketchbook and fill it over the course of the term, which can act as a “personal path of development.”
Many people will keep their sketchbooks private, Tom said, but for him, exhibiting these pages allows others to see his journey as he “strove to reach for that impossible dream.”
When someone walks through the exhibition at the Yellow Box, said it’s “a little deceiving,” because only one page of each sketchbook is shown at a time.
“You don’t realize each book has hundreds and hundreds of pages in it, and tons and tons of stuff,” said Tom.
William said while the exhibition remains at the Yellow Box, it will be changing on a regular basis with the pages of the books flipped from time to time.
“We could have a new exhibition in there every day for 10 years. So you know, each book would have 150 to 200 pages, and there’s 100 books in there,” said William.
William said the National Gallery of Canada and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery have expressed interest in housing the sketchbooks, but Tom hasn’t decided yet where they’ll go.
For now, the exhibition will stay at the Yellow Box until February before going to the Andrew and Laura McCain Art Gallery in Florenceville.
This story was originally published in CBC News on Dec. 3, 2022.
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