We were at the Ron Bloore memorial event Sunday night at the Royal Ontario Museum. Former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson spoke, along with a few others, including Ron’s long-time studio assistant and friend Hank Roest.  A number of Bloore’s paintings were hung, reminding me what a marvellous painter he was, throughout his career.

I found my self transported back to York University in the 80s, when Bloore raised the bar for me, and pushed me to find my own path as a painter. I remembered our many sketching trips later on. We would walk the forest paths, most of us looking for a vista to draw or paint. Bloore would sit under a tree and start a fantastic pencil drawing of the forest floor at his feet. We always brought a picnic lunch, and usually Ron would bring along a bottle of Retsina. I loved those days.

I recalled the many lunches, when several of us would meet up at the Bloore studio, then head out for a lunch peppered with lively discussion. It seems like yesterday, Bloore looking up over his lunch plate,  saying he liked painting because you could look at a painting, see it all at once and know within a fraction of a second if you wanted to invest more time in it. This he compared to film, which required a different kind of leap of faith – the willingness to invest the time, sight unseen.

Ron Bloore was a great painter, a Canadian cultural treasure and a dear friend.