For 30 years, I have watched the careers of Grant Leier and Nixie Barton unfold in a blaze of inspiration. Judging by the frequency with which I come across their work, they might be this area’s most popular artists. Now, after a lifetime of reinventing himself, Grant is at work on large canvases featuring familiar motifs.
“A lot of people were asking: ‘Why are you painting the same things?’ ” Grant told me. “It’s because I know them and I have a history with them and I love them and they have been successful before, so I know that I can recreate them in a better way that I am more excited about and they are going to be even more successful, I hope. Actually, I’ve introduced new elements, the ornamentation is more intricate and they are evolving that way.”
And Nixie has returned to working with acrylic paint after a decade of encaustic. A visit to the Barton and Leier studios is always a source of inspiration. They are surrounded by artwork and a delirious display of found objects, and the atmosphere is one of joy.
“I know that sounds Pollyanna-ish,” Grant told me, “but loving what you do, it’s huge. And, as artists, we are very fortunate.”
It seems a long time ago that I first visited Grant’s studio in the Duck Building on Victoria’s View Street. It was 1989, and he was surrounded by a flotilla of little red Chinese shrines. He was preparing a show for the Fran Willis Gallery on Store Street.
And soon after that, I met Nixie — her name is a short form of Nixiola, who was her mother’s favourite aunt. Nixie worked for Prestige Framing on Oak Bay Avenue while an art student at the University of Victoria. Her boss, Roland Hill, knew Grant Leier in Calgary and one day asked Barton to pick Leier up at the airport. Hill knew they’d hit it off.
“Tell him that you are going to marry him,” Hill called out as she left. Six years later, in 1989, they were married at the North Park Gallery, on the opening day of their successful show.
Grant graduated from the Alberta College of Art in 1978 and rose to dizzying heights in the creative end of commercial art. He did the Coca-Cola arch for the Calgary Winter Olympics, and a major commission for the Alberta Pavilion for Expo 86. About that time, he moved to this town, and his style of collaged paintings was soon gracing posters for the Belfry Theatre and the Metchosin Summer School of the Arts.
In 1991, Grant and Nixie opened the Barton Leier Gallery on Cormorant Street, and brought many other artists to our attention. After five years, they left that Cormorant Street space in the hands of Martin Batchelor, their picture framer, who continues to operate there to this day.
Grant and Nixie’s new home was just off De Courcy Road near Yellow Point. A battered ranch-style bungalow on eight acres, it was close to Nanaimo, Barton’s family home. What had formerly been banal and suburban was soon overflowing with creative pizzazz. The kitchen cupboards glowed with tea-chest gold, and the floor sported hand-painted carpets.
Soon, Leier planted the acreage with every showy and peculiar growing thing. Grant’s motto: “Be the Brave Gardener.” Set about were torch-cut sheet steel rats welded onto garden stakes, and the outbuildings were joyously encrusted with plaster ducks and rubber dinosaurs. The Guerrilla Gardener TV show visited, and what seemed at first to be insupportably remote became a “destination.”
Amid this extravagance, the two produced hundreds of paintings for their burgeoning careers, supplying galleries in Whistler, Banff, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Victoria. They had a gallery on site, and then added another in downtown Nanaimo, followed by a remote studio for Grant at nearby Cedar and one at home where Nixie could work with encaustic. She also shared this ancient medium with students at the Metchosin Summer School of the Arts and at Painter’s Lodge in Campbell River.
A few years ago, health issues made it impossible for the two to continue at that hectic pace, and they simplified their lives, dropping the retail business and moving to a quirky house near Departure Bay in Nanaimo. Now, they stay home and dedicate all their time to painting. For his recent show at the West End Gallery’s Edmonton headquarters, Grant produced some of the most complex canvases of his career.
“I’ll tell you a story,” Nixie explained. “Grant’s up every single day at five o’clock in the morning, he’s up and he’s painting. He does that every single day. And nothing has made him happier than to be able to do this without having to go to gift shows to buy the stuff to put in our galleries. He’s never been happier than to be able to just go downstairs to his studio.”
Grant agreed: “I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. I paint for 60-70-80 hours a week sometimes, when I am getting ready for a show. And I’m loving every minute of it.”
He admits that he’s customer-driven, “a bit of an art slut really,” he smiled. “I love to paint so much. I was trained as a textile designer, and I like to do things in series.”
He seemed almost embarrassed by his organization. Currently, he’s at work on his next exhibit — 10 months in advance.
“I just spent seven weeks drawing it. I now have 26 large paintings drawn out.” Each is designed, outlined on a white canvas and ready for painting. “They take 100-150 hours minimum each to paint. The drawing is fun, but after seven weeks, I’m glad to be in the underpainting stage, which takes two months. And then the overpainting stage, and that takes four or five months. And then that body of work will be ready: 26 paintings.”
Nixie Barton, as ever, is bustling and unpredictable. I always seem to come away from a visit branded with her sugar-pink lipstick. What’s that colour?
“Stayput Salmon,” Nixie replies, bursting into laughter. At the moment, she’s rediscovering acrylic paint. A new series of landscapes are set between gold-leaf borders. Her word paintings, simple or mysterious, radiate with her love of colour. Though not as technically dazzling as Grant’s, Nixie’s work is more subtle and mysterious, hovering between suggestion and finish.
In 2005, Goody Niosi created a lavishly illustrated book for TouchWood Editions about these two, aptly titled The Romance Continues. And 12 years later, it does continue. There is something very positive going on here, art to make you feel good.
Grant Leier and Nixie Barton are represented in Victoria by West End Gallery (1203 Broad St., 250-388-0009)