I was born in 1947 in the eastern Ontario village of Domville and my primary and secondary education was completed in the Bancroft, Ontario region. In 1967 I began studies at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto and graduated in 1971 from the Communications and Design course, with principal interest in painting and photography.

Over the following decades, I worked at various advertising and promotion jobs, in the Toronto area, in full and part-time positions–my last tenure being twenty years as promotions/print production manager in the Corporate Marketing Department of Bank of Montreal.

Throughout the years, I maintained a parallel career as a fine artist, showing in many solo and group exhibitions. As well, I have self-published two books of poetry combined with black and white photography; an illustrated children’s book on the theme of meditation; and a book in which I document the experience of a five-day meditation retreat in prose, poetry, photography and paintings and drawings titled, Retreat at Worst Horse. In the fall of 2020, I published my autobiography, My Life, etc., available at blurb.ca

Between 2001 and 2004 I trained at the Transpersonal Therapy Centre in Toronto. And since May of 2007, I worked full-time as a fine artist and psychotherapist. I presently live in my original family homestead, the vintage Maxwell Settlement schoolhouse (built in 1910 and the family property since 1955). Between 1977 and 1983 I wrote profiles of local artists for the Beaches, Toronto Ward Nine News, spotlighting 180 artists over that timeframe ; and between 2008 and 2015 I wrote a monthly column for a local Durham Region news organization, Metroland Media in which I profiled over 100 local artists, that were published online and in local papers; and continue that art journalism in the ArtScene newsletter of the Pineridge Arts Council to the present. Between 2008 and 2014 I facilitated art projects in the Durham Region artist-in-the-school ArtsSmarts program in local public and high schools; and taught art to five children’s classes, plus three adult classes and two seniors’ classes in the City of Pickering community recreational art program from 2009 to 2022. And I facilitated paint events and co-ordinated the painting of murals on a voluntary basis with patients at the Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences in Whitby up until recently. As well, I act as a juror for various arts groups on an ongoing basis; and curate, organize and participate in group art exhibitions with titles: Face Yourself, (2015, self-portraits), Art Heals (2016, facing trauma through creating a work of art) and The Mahler Collaborations (2017, my collaboration with 12 other artists, each pair producing a collaborative abstract. In 2019 I organized a group exhibition titled, 15 Reasons to Live (I created 15 abstracts on the “Reasons” and involved other artists to create a work of art in any genre on one of the themes). And during the two years of the COVID 19 pandemic, I organized 5 virtual art shows on Facebook involving many dozens of artists and on various theme.

My paintings and drawings are primarily done in a high realist style using, principally, my own photography as reference. I also shoot photographs and exhibit them on their own fine art merits.  Over the five decades of my career, I have put together more than 50 solo shows on specific themes, i.e.: early on: several suites of paintings of Lake Ontario; an exhibition of Polaroid photos titled, Parallels//Polarities; a show called The Joy of Falling, a set of psychologically-challenging paintings and drawings of leaping and falling child figures; a show of oil paintings based on images from a specific Family Reunion; Moments of Awakening, an exhibition with canvases that explored my spiritual quest as a Buddhist; and a painting series titled My Landscapes, a return to my muse, the countryside around rural Bancroft, Ontario, where I grew up, and images from the environs of Ajax, Ontario where I lived up until recently. In the spring of 2013, I completed a series of 30 acrylic and mixed media on paper abstract paintings inspired by classical music compositions called Classical Abstracts. And then a series of “fusion” paintings in which I combined realistic figures in oils with acrylic and mixed media abstract elements. I produced a series of large format portraits of young females with serious expressions in the time frame between 2014 and 2016 I called Lush Gravitas that was exhibited at several venues, including at the Whitby Station Gallery. My most recent solo shows were: a series of paintings called Magical-Mystical-Mythical at the McLean Community Centre in Ajax in March/April 2018 that celebrated the attributes of magic and mystery and myth that I find in the locales I personally have inhabited and through which I have traveled; a show titled, Endless Summer at my retreat/studio in Bancroft in summer 2018; and Recent Figurative Works, a series of paintings and drawings portraying a total of 118 figures and portraits in 18 works of art at the Art Gallery of Bancroft in summer 2020. And, as well, I have participated in more than 140 group exhibitions, primarily in Durham Region and the GTA, winning 30 awards in numerous jury shows.

Collections

Corporate collections: BMO Bank of Montreal and Town of Ajax

Private collections: Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Nashville, New York City, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Pennsylvania, Washington state, Idaho, England, Germany and Japan.

Contact Information

haomarra@gmail.com  905-683-1860   www.allanomarra.com  

686 Maxwell Settlement Road, Bancroft, Ontario K0L 1C