Paterson Ewen

William Paterson Ewen was born in Montreal on April 7, 1925. From a very young age, he was interested in art since he asked his mother for wax to make trees and small figurines. Ewen's mother was uninterested in art and refused to buy decorative items for their home. She gave in to the demands of her thirteen-year-old son who asked her for reproductions of artists like Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Jean-François Millet. Three years later, at sixteen, Ewen completed his first major artistic project which was a clay bust of his sister.
At this time, Ewen was visiting his aunt in Ottawa, where he visited the National Museum of Man (now the Canadian Museum of History). In this museum, Ewen was inspired by Japanese woodcuts and landscapes. This first initiation will influence his artistic practice.

He voluntarily enlisted in the Canadian Army and was assigned in December 1944 to a reconnaissance regiment responsible for spotting enemy troops, but he did not take part in any operations. Back home, young Ewen enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts program at McGill University with a major in science.
During the late 1940s, Paterson Ewen's works were primarily sketches and copies of magazine covers. These naive-style works were executed until the end of 1954.

Also in the 1940s, he enrolled in a bachelor's degree in fine arts at McGill where he took drawing classes from John Lyman. He then continued at the Montreal Museum School of Fine Art and Design under the direction of Arthur Lismer.

In the spring of 1949, Ewen attended a conference where he met Françoise Sullivan, painter, dancer and member of the Automatistes. Ewen is completely captivated by Sullivan and the feeling is mutual. She introduced him shortly after to the other Automatists. The group was interested in the figurative work of Paterson Ewen and invited him to present work alongside them at the Rebelles exhibition. Françoise Sullivan and Paterson Ewen married in December 1949. The following year, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts chose two works by Ewen for its 67th annual Spring Salon.

We had to wait until 1954 to see the first abstract work by the painter, which was presented at Espace 55 of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and then at the L’Actuelle Gallery. In the winter of 1956, Ewen accepted a position as personnel administrator with Bathurst Containers. Sullivan has just given birth to their second son, Geoffrey, while Jean-Christophe and Francis would follow soon after. Subsequently, Ewen would become a founding member of the Association of Non-Figurative Painters of Montreal alongside Jean McEwen.
During the following decade, Ewen's artistic production was impressive although it was limited in the number of works produced. From 1958, the Galerie Denyse Delrue presented an exhibition devoted to his work, which it continued to do almost every year until 1963.
His life changed when his marriage to Françoise Sulivan ended in 1966. A deep depression afflicted him and he left Montreal to settle in London, Ontario. He began a calmer teaching life and became involved in the region's artistic community. He will pick up his brushes again, turning towards figurative creations.

He was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1975, represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 1982, and received an honorary doctorate of law from Concordia University in Montreal. He subsequently received a doctorate in literature from the University of Western Ontario in London in 1989, the Jean A. Chalmers National Visual Arts Prize in 1995 and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize in 2000.