After Hours A PROFESSIONAL’S GUIDE TO LEISURE PROFILE
Art of the Skip Ron Ford pays homage to his favourite sport by immortalizing curlers on canvas
of her husband, Mike, who is also a curler). It’s quite an achievement for someone who hadn’t even picked up a paintbrush until his retirement three years ago. With a demanding job and raising a family of four children, there was never the time nor the energy for outside hobbies. But that changed when he retired. “Suddenly [I had] a lot more free time on [my] hands,” says the affable 62-year-old. “I knew I wanted to be busy and active when I stopped working.” Aſter a friend suggested he take
R
ON FORD LAUGHS when it’s suggested his life resembles that of former US president
George W. Bush. Like Bush, for example, Ford worked for the government: his final position before retiring in 2012 was in the Ottawa office of the Ministry of Finance for the Ontario government. The real similarity, however, is their retirement pursuit: both have discovered the joy of spending hours in front of a canvas painting portraits. While Bush has focused his artistic attention on world leaders, Ford has largely chosen one of his passions for his
62 | CPA MAGAZINE | JUNE/JULY 2015
subjects: curlers. His inspiration came during last year’s
Sochi Olympics. He wanted to capture the intensity of the two gold-medal-win- ning Canadian skips, Jennifer Jones and Brad Jacobs, driving from the hack. It was a subject close to his heart: he loves and participates in the sport. One of his curling portraits — he has painted a number of curlers, using photographs from the web — is now hanging at his local rink, the Cumberland Curling Club. He has also sold a few of them, including two to the parents of gold medallist Dawn McEwen (one of her and the other
a painting class at the Ottawa School of Art, Ford discovered he was a natural; perhaps this was due to artistic genes in the family — his grandfather was a painter. He now spends several hours a day painting. He started with landscapes, but gravitated toward portraiture, which he finds more fulfilling. “The real joy for me is seeing a portrait come to life,” Ford says. He singles out a painting he did of his father from a Second World War photograph
as one of his favourites. “As his likeness started coming through the canvas, I became very emotional. It was him, there in front of me.” Ford sees a few parallels between his
former day job as an auditor and his painting. “You have to take a detailed, patient and methodical approach to the work,” he says. He brings that same approach to the painting, but with a twist. “Being artistic is about creating and developing new ideas, to bring something new to the world. I get real joy from that.” — John Shoesmith
Perry Zavitz/KlixPix
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