Richard Karon, Lake of Bays Artist Chose "The Road Less Travelled" to Capture The Unique Lakeland

 

Richard Karon, Lake of Bays Artist - The Biography That Continues to Inspire the Writer-Me, For Some Significant But Not Obvious Reasons

For Love of Family, Home, Studio and Region -

An Introduction to the Biography of Artist Richard Karon

By Ted Currie

     It is my belief, and maybe I’m wrong about this, but from what I knew of Richard Karon, the painter, most of it learned from his son Richard Jr. for the purposes of the artist’s biography, the Polish-Canadian would most likely have spent the balance of his life working from his Lake of Bays studio; if life hadn’t, as they say, “got in the way.”

     Pressing family matters and an unexpected downturn in the local original art market, for a short period, made it impossible in the late 1980’s, for the artist to remain at his home studio, with his wife and young son; and it is of course understood, even for this lover of all things rural, that isolated, hinterland living, isn’t perfect for everyone. After Karon and his family sold off their possessions and the artist’s personally crafted studio in the woods, it is known his art work there after seemed to most of his admirers to be less inspired and not in keeping with his vibrant work studying the wetlands, bogs, and hidden bays around the Township of Lake of Bays.

     This collection of blogs, under the heading “The Birch Hollow Antique Press,” is fundamentally an archives of many of the now scattered and indeed forgotten feature stories and biographies, that I worked on since I became a freelance writer living in Gravenhurst, in very early 1990. This was after I had worked as an editor with Muskoka Publications for a decade, from 1979 to 1989, contributing to a half dozen of their products including The Herald-Gazette, The Muskoka Advance, and the Muskoka Sun, and another short stint as editor of The Muskokan, for a competing publication, I decided that it was time to work on projects that appealed to my sense of adventure; versus working from publisher suggestions on sticky notes, that I was notorious for crumpling up and discarding because they were usually boring and uninspiring. I just couldn’t do this stuff, often for their friends and political allies, so when I got the chance, at a poverty wage, to work on a freelance basis, I began having some real fun working on stories that appealed to me for many different reasons.

     The reason that I decided to work on the Richard Karon biography was simple enough. Karon wasn’t tempted to veer off his own artistic interests and instincts, about what would make his land and waterscapes unique in the region. He wasn’t interested in the kind of nostalgic and popular waterscape scenes that other artists have exploited heavily, that appeal to those cottagers who want identifiable scenes and familiar architecture around the Muskoka Lakes generally. He didn’t opt to paint cottage adornments, such as Muskoka chairs out on docks, or boathouses that would identify significant properties, and thus have an increased approval rating from customer-cottagers around the lakes; thus making more money on a regular basis, including commission work, of which he was highly capable as a painter. Instead, and I love his work for this reason, Karon chose, like Robert Frost’s poem, that identifies, “the road less travelled.” He was predictably unpredictable, you might say, and he interested me because of this characteristic appreciation for lesser “beautiful locales.” I have similar habits in writing, as he exercised of free will, often depicting hard to reach, wildly overgrown, and rough hewn natural subjects, that even the famed Group of Seven artists might have avoided, because of serious compromises of prominent light and shadow….in making what they believed was gallery worthy paintings. Karon saw it differently, and decided that these lesser known, under-appreciated nooks and crannies of the Lake of Bays topography, were indeed landscapes that had an inner magic and ethereal glow, quite apart from enhancements of sun, sky and water. These were often places that provided him with a rare solitude, and subject resources that forced his capabilities to the extreme; to make these rocky, treed alcoves, and compromised water-sides tight with thickets of natural qualities and quantities, appealing to the eye despite the fact they are not popular views from well known vantage points that would have been more accessible studies……with more customer potential, than what he was attempting to achieve, by highlighting all of the region’s curious, mysterious wild places.

     Richard Karon’s paintings may one day escalate substantially in price, now long after his death. He was prolific as an artist, and each year our business fields dozens of calls and text messages from those who have purchased his art panels from estate sales and auctions, asking for valuations, and a little bit of biographical information on the artist’s career. Value of work was not one of the reasons I decided to work, some years back, with the artist’s on, Richard, to publish some basic information about his father’s life and work. It was, as I state earlier, that I had an admiration for his journey-man effort to use art as a means of support for his young family. And that he didn’t make any attempt at artistic grandstanding, or sell out when it came to the subjects that might have made him more money in sales, and abundant commissions of which he certainly could have handled with relative ease. He believed in artistry and utilized the inspiration he got from the landscape that embraced him in his forest setting. Without ever intending to do this, I did follow his lead, and possibly it did hurt my chances at gaining greater exposure in the media, and with book offers to write popular histories of the region. When it wasn’t the kind of work I wanted, and would have found in any way inspiring. There has never been a publisher chase me down with a big cash deal to publish folklore heritage; but should I have decided to author books about old wooden boats, well then, I could have been writing profitably to infinity. Just couldn’t do it, nor more than Richard Karon would have changed his interests in what was a paintable subject; and what was uninspiring and a too-often portrayed image in Muskoka.

     The series of articles to follow this introduction, will begin tomorrow, for this last week of September, 2021. It is one of my favorite biographical works, of which have included art studies of Muskoka and Bracebridge artists, Bob Everett, Bill and Winifred Anderson, Frank Johnston, of Gravenhurst, Ada Florence Kinton, of Huntsville, Ross Smith of Bracebridge, and Katherine Day of Oro-Medonte. These are the largely unsung artists, in my opinion, who have most interested me as a Muskoka-lover, an art collector, and as a writer of a parallel ilk. I hope you will enjoy this short study of artist, Richard Karon. If Richard Jr. is reading this, and would like to add any more information, newly acquired about his father’s work, there will be space at the end of this series to provide any updates.

      Lots more to come from the unpredictable writer-in-residence of The Birch Hollow Antique Press in coming months. Please stay tuned.