Bruce Head never quit playing with new art forms and approaches, collecting and cherishing friends, offering support and encouragement to younger artists, and quietly working to foster new ways to bring art into the public eye.
Bruce was one of a few young Prairie painters who burst out of the University of Manitoba's School of Art in 1953 and sparked a Prairie-based contemporary-art movement. For all his life, Bruce found pure joy in making art. That joy poured into the lively colours and bold energy of his canvases and sculptures, and spilled over to embrace friends, family and his eventual soulmate, Judy.
With five children - Glenn, Grant, Ian, Toni and Tara - to raise during his marriage to Verona Orchard, Bruce worked as a graphic designer with CBC Winnipeg and did freelance design work. But he also painted steadily, becoming the youngest Manitoban at the time to be elected to the Royal Canadian Academy, and a favourite of local architects seeking dramatic large works to finish off major projects.
In the 1960s, he began an artists' collective gallery in Winnipeg. It lasted only a few years, but helped launch a few careers.
In the late 1960s, he pushed two-dimensional painting into a third dimension, shaping canvas into relief forms. The Winnipeg Art Gallery mounted a one-man show featuring the unique approach in 1973. A few years later, he met life partner Judy Waytiuk. He built a studio onto their home and began painting full-time.
Bruce pushed for an art gallery within the University of Winnipeg and became the first artist to show in that new space, Gallery 1C03, in 1988.
Today, his work is scattered across Canada, in personal collections and public galleries including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Winnipeggers see Bruce's vibrant art daily, and his sculpted concrete wall in the underground concourse at Portage and Main remains the largest concrete art form in Canada.
In 2008, Bruce was celebrated with a major life retrospective at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Headspace, covering 50 years of his work.
But there was never an "artist's ego" in Bruce. He never talked about his steady support of the arts community or the charities where he donated works for fundraisers. He just did it.
In winter, he loved travelling in the Caribbean with Judy. Summers were taken up with backyard outdoor sculpting, driving trips around Western Canada and golf.
Some say you can judge a man's character by how he treats his pets. Over the decades, Bruce coddled the household cats, and always had a worshipping dog stationed beside him as he painted. We were incredibly lucky to have known Bruce Head.
Judy Waytiuk is Bruce's life partner.