Ken Christopher is both artist and musician at this Saturday’s Art and Music Night at Jojo’s Café. Pictured here, Christopher plays his seven-string guitar inspired by jazz guitar legend Lenny Breau. (Richard McGuire photo)
When Jojo’s Café holds its monthly art and music night this Saturday, the featured artist is a talented landscape painter and the featured musician plays a rare seven-string guitar.
The artist and musician are the same person, Ken Christopher, 75, whose roots are in Saskatchewan, but who has lived throughout North America from Tuktoyaktuk to Florida. He now hopes to make Osoyoos his home.
“This landscape in the South Okanagan is just blowing me away,” said Christopher in an interview last week. “I’m absolutely in love with it. It’s magical.”
Christopher, who gave up painting in oils two years ago because of their impact on his health, now paints only in watercolours.
His local landscapes feature foregrounds of orchards and vineyards with mountains in the background. The broad brushstrokes are impressionistic, sometimes almost abstract.
Christopher came to the Okanagan a year ago for a few months, but hasn’t yet produced enough local paintings to fill the show, so he’ll include some paintings from elsewhere.
“I came here a year ago just to spend a few months of the winter and I absolutely fell in love,” he said. “I’m trying to move here, but it’s quite expensive. So I’m sort of back and forth with Saskatchewan where I can live quite cheaply.”
Born in Swift Current, Sask., Christopher most recently has been living in a rural area near Lac Pelletier, about 35 kilometres to the south.
His art career and other phases of his life have taken him to many other parts of North America, including to Vancouver, where he studied and was briefly a commercial artist, as well as to Calgary, where his landscapes in oils were swooped up by oil companies like Shell and a number of prestigious institutions.
His work has been represented in such public and corporate art collections as those of the Alberta Art Foundation, Canada Council Art Bank, the Glenbow Museum, Edmonton Art Gallery, Prime Minister of Canada’s Collection, Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian Pacific and Bank of Montreal among others.
Some of his oil paintings feature scenes of southern Alberta mountains and foothills, which made a deep impression on him, but he’s also done paintings of autumn scenes amidst the rocks and lakes of eastern Ontario and the striking landscapes of New Mexico and New Hampshire.
His early artistic influences were Canada’s Group of Seven, French Impressionists like Oscar-Claude Monet and Édouard Manet and Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh.
His style evolved, however, as he was exposed to New York Abstract Minimalist and Colour Field styles at workshops at Emma Lake, Saskatchewan.
But his successful art career in the 1970s and early 1980s was punctuated with difficult times – a struggle with alcoholism, divorce and a car accident in 1992 that left him with panic attacks that were subsequently linked to post-traumatic stress. The fumes of the paints aggravated his condition.
At several times in his life, Christopher has withdrawn to a shack in Saskatchewan to gather his thoughts and turn to music.
He played for a while in a country and western band. When he quit drinking in 1988, he turned to his guitar instead.
“I grew up with country,” said Christopher. “I’m just hot for old-style ’50s country.”
His other major influences include Bob Dylan and Gram Parsons among others.
But a turning point came when he took music lessons with Bob Erlendson, a Winnipeg jazz pianist who was a huge influence on legendary jazz guitar genius Lenny Breau, whose life and death were marked by tragedy.
Breau, born in Maine to French Canadian parents, played a seven-string guitar, approaching it like a piano.
When Erlendson told Christopher about Breau’s seven-string guitar, at first Christopher didn’t want to hear about it. But he soon had second thoughts.
At the time, a Calgary guitar maker was making a custom jazz guitar for Christopher. He asked the guitar maker if it was too late to make it into a seven-string.
He was in luck – the guitar maker hadn’t yet started the neck.
“It took me 30 years and I’ve developed all the chords with a different tuning,” Christopher said of his efforts to master the rare instrument.
Christopher plans to work with BJ Engel, who runs a recording studio in Osoyoos, to produce a second album.
His first, recorded about 15 years ago as a blend of country and new age, was cut in Nashville.
Jim Peltier, who organizes the music and art nights at Jojo’s, said he met Christopher at an open mic event at the café a year ago and Christopher expressed interest in a show.
“Ken’s work is of very high calibre,” said Peltier. “I consider it a coup to get an exhibition of his work. To be fair, we have in the past had some really high-quality presenters. It is kind of neat that Terry Isaacs, also a highly respected artist, provided his own music when he had an exhibition.”
The art and music night runs from 7 to 9 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 6 at Jojo’s Café. The art will remain on the walls until Jan. 27.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
