PLASKETT, Joseph

1918 - 2014

Joseph Francis Plaskett was born in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada on 12 July 1918. He initially studied history, and taught school for six years and in 1944, became interested in art and studied at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver and the Banff School of Fine Arts, Alberta where his teacher was Alexander Young Jackson (1882-1974). In 1945, he joined the British Columbia Society of Artists and in 1946, having been awarded the first Emily Carr Scholarship for study in the U.S. by Lawren Stewart Harris (1885-1970), he studied at the San Francisco School of Art spending time with Hans Hoffman (1880-1966) in New York and it was Hoffman who helped turn him toward realism, even though Hoffman was an abstract artist. He then studied in Paris with Fernand Léger (1881-1955) and others 1949-1951 before going to the Slade School, London 1951-1952 when living at 4 Regent's Park Terrace, London NW 1. With the aid of a Canadian Government Overseas Scholarship, he studied etching and engraving in Paris in 1953 with Stanley William Hayter (1901-1988) and Plaskett opened a studio there in 1957. From 1994 he lived, with his assistant and companion Mario Doucet, at Woodbridge in Suffolk, where his work was inspired by his Suffolk Garden and friends. Since the 1940s, he has had more than sixty-five solo and group exhibitions including shows in Halifax, Fredericton, Victoria, and Ottawa and sold work to major public, private and corporate collections and his work is on show at Gallery East at Woodbridge. Plaskett received the Order of Canada in the spring of 2001 for excellence in the field of visual art. Joseph Francis Plaskett died at Woodbridge on 21 September 2014 at the age of 96 but before his death Joe Plaskett set up a Foundation which continues to make a generous award to an emerging Canadian artist to live, create, and travel in Europe. Mario Doucet still [2022] lives at The Cedars, Eyke Road, Bromeswell, Woodbridge, Suffolk.

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Works by This Artist