Written May 2017 for the art history course Modernist Painting and Sculpture taught by Shepherd Steiner at the School of Art, University of Manitoba.

Reflection, 2am, 1 August 2026:

This class, and the other class I was taking with Shep Steiner laid the foundations for me being able to write about other people’s art with confidence. Prior to being taught by Shep, I had believed that I didn’t like art history, but when he taught me I realised that I (and all my peers at my home university) maybe didn’t hate art history, it had just been being taught to us in a way that was very boring and made it seem totally naf. I personally did not aspire to be like any of those people teaching me…

Shep taught us that we are theorists.

I reflect now that Shep actually wanted to develop fellow theorists, and respected us as fellow theorists, and he talked to us and listened to us as such. He was in no way threatened by our empowerment, but rather buoyed by it, and I think that is the true difference between some teachers and others.

I was so proud of this essay, but then I became embarrassed that the first strong essay I’d written was about the work of a dead cis white male modernist painter who was already well known. His time had been had and I was still writing about him, but I hope that it comes through that this piece is not really about trying to uplift Olitski’s work… (nor do I wish to disrespect it), but it’s about the process of what can happen when you reaaaaaaally think… and you write, and you write to think, and you art to write… and you pull something through that is beyond it’s original frame…

Plus, for some reason, I like Olitski. I never met or knew him so I can’t vouch for him… but in all my research, I developed an affinity for him… and I can feel it now, that it does matter that I like him. And I think it matters that we actually care what we write about… I do care and I do like these paintings, even though I still also roll my eyes at them a bit, if I actually ALLOW myself to like them, I do, otherwise I would not have chosen them. The Winnipeg Art Gallery collection is deeply flawed, it’s reflective of the Western Art Canon, and the chances that they would have a modernist painting or sculpture in the collection that was NOT by a white man is… uh, unlikely. So it’s all a reflection of my circumstance, that I was being taught by a white man, in the academy and we were working with a colonial collection. That is the frame.