PAUL RODRIK (1915–1983)

Paul Rodrik (1915-1983)
Subject ” Northern Landscape ”
Size: 20″ x 36″ ( 27 1/2″ x 43 1/2″ framed, 4 3/16” wide custom knotty pine frame ) ………$1,795.00 Canadian

This inviting northern landscape by Paul Rodrik reflects the artist’s steady, observant approach to the Canadian wilderness. Rodrik had a clear sense of structure and atmosphere, and this painting is a strong example of his calm, balanced vision. His confident brushwork and understated palette create a quiet, grounded impression of the land.

The piece is handsomely presented in a custom knotty pine frame, a natural, warm wood that complements Rodrik’s subject matter and makes the work especially well-suited for a cottage, lake house, or any space with a relaxed, rustic character.

A thoughtful and appealing work, it stands as a meaningful addition to any collection of Canadian landscape art.

Paul Rodrik (1915–1983), born Paul Johnston Rodrik in Toronto, emerged as a distinctive Canadian painter shaped both by his own formidable talent and by the legacy of his father, Franz (Frank) Hans Johnston—one of the original founders of the Group of Seven. Growing up under the guidance of such a central figure in Canadian art, Rodrik’s earliest training came directly from travelling and working with his father throughout the northern woods in the 1930s. He later continued his studies at the Ontario College of Art under Fred Haines and at Central Technical School with Charles Goldhammer.

By 1940 Rodrik was exhibiting on his own, earning praise for paintings that combined bold structure, vigorous handling of form, and a keen memory for the northern landscape. After serving as a staff artist with the RCAF during the war, he adopted the surname “Rodrik”—his paternal grandmother’s name—to establish a professional identity separate from his father’s celebrated career. Despite the challenge of stepping out from the shadow of a Group of Seven founder, he became one of the rare Canadian painters able to sustain himself entirely through his art.

Rodrik explored an unusually broad range of media—Chinese ink, watercolour, gouache, oil glazes, heavy-bodied oils incorporating natural gums and resins, and eventually acrylics. Over decades he expanded from figures, animals, and agricultural scenes into freer, more abstract forms rooted in nature. His relentless curiosity drew him far beyond Ontario: repeated journeys into the Atlantic North resulted in a remarkable body of work depicting icebergs, glaciers, and sea ice of the Davis Strait and Labrador coast. To reach these remote regions he engineered his own rugged studio-vehicle—reinforced with steel, fitted with a propane heater, enlarged fuel tanks, and wrap-around glass so he could paint on location in extreme conditions. His Labrador expeditions were physically punishing, at times dangerous, yet they produced some of his most celebrated images, later exhibited at the Loranger Gallery in 1978.

Although painting remained his central pursuit, Rodrik also inherited his father’s restless inventiveness. He established a company to develop new mechanical devices, including a combustion engine and a specialized camera, and maintained a studio in a historic Toronto carriage house for sculpture, murals, and writing—including the biography of his father. In 1979 he helped form the Franz Johnston–Paul Rodrik Foundation, dedicated to supporting established Canadian painters and sculptors and donating works to public galleries.

Rodrik spent his later years living and working in rural Ontario—Leith, Briarhill, Balaclava, Annan, and finally near Bancroft—continually refining his art while maintaining an active life of lecturing, farming, painting, and invention. He died at 67, leaving behind a uniquely vigorous body of work that honours, yet stands independently from, the Group of Seven legacy into which he was born.