Catherine Senitt (born 1945 in

Rochester, NY Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in ...

) is a Canadian painter and inventor of Wrinkles dogs. Her works are in the permanent collections of a number of major Canadian public galleries, though she has not publicly exhibited since 1979.

Life and work

Senitt grew up in

, and studied in the School of Art and Design at the

Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private university, private research university in the town of Henrietta, New York, Henrietta in the Rochester, New York, metropolitan area. The university offers undergraduate and graduate degree ...

. Her talents were recognized early through the receipt of the John A. Varney Award in 1964. In 1966, at the age of 21, she won Best Female Artist in the Finger Lakes Exhibit. After her third year at the School of Art and Design, she immigrated to Canada in 1966. She settled in Toronto for the first 9 months and then moved to a school house near Fergus, Ontario.Worthington, Helen, "Artist Lives in a Whimsical World", "Toronto Star", February 22, 1974, page E1. During the late 1960s she developed a successful painting career in Toronto using the name Cathy Senitt-Harbison. She showed her work at the prestigious Pollock Gallery in 1967, where owner

Jack Pollock Jack Henry Pollock (1 August 1930 – 10 December 1992) was an author, painter, art educator and art dealer who was a fixture on the Toronto art scene for over 3 decades. Pollock was the flamboyant founder and owner of The Pollock Gallery in Toront ...

also represented such artists as

Ken Danby Ken Danby, D.F.A. (6 March 1940 – 23 September 2007) was a Canadian painter. Danby is best known for creating highly realistic paintings that study everyday life. His 1972 painting '' At the Crease'', portraying a masked hockey goalie defe ...

David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists o ...

and

Willem de Kooning Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter ...

.MacDonald, Colin S. "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists

published online by the National Gallery of Canada, accessed July 3, 2011. She continued to be represented there through 1975 and the Merton Gallery from 1977 to 1978. Senitt was awarded her first Canada Council Arts Grant in 1968. Senitt's work was chosen to be part of the "Man and His World" exhibit in the grounds of the 1967 Expo 67, International and Universal Exposition (Expo 67) in Montreal. Senitt was selected to join Canada's pavilion at

Expo 70 The or Expo 70 was a world's fair held in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, Japan between March 15 and September 13, 1970. Its theme was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In Japanese, Expo '70 is often referred to as . It was the first world's fai ...

in Osaka, Japan. She was included in the inaugural show of the newly renamed

Art Gallery of Ontario The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; french: Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, on Dundas Street West between McCaul and Be ...

. The January 1969 issue of ''

Maclean's Magazine ''Maclean's'', founded in 1905, is a Canadian news magazine reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events. Its founder, publisher John Bayne Maclean, established the magazine to provide a uniquely Canadian perspe ...

'' featured an uncredited image of a paper mache sculpture Senitt had made of

Pierre Trudeau Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau ( , ; October 18, 1919 – September 28, 2000), also referred to by his initials PET, was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 15th prime minister of Canada from 1968 to 1979 and ...

in the form of a jack-in-the-box. A 1974 feature article in the ''

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and pa ...

'' painted a rich picture of Senitt's life at the time, showing the schoolhouse she lived in, as well as a photograph of her painting while sitting on the floor. A photograph of her painted bottles states that they sold for $30–50 at the Pollock gallery. A feature on Jack Pollock (owner of the Pollock Gallery in Toronto) in ''Home Decor/Canada'' (February 1981) has several pictures of painted cupboards and tables in his house, painted by Senitt, but mistakenly credited to Bennet-Harbison from the Maritimes in the article. In the late 70s Senitt developed the

Wrinkles A wrinkle, also known as a rhytid, is a fold, ridge or crease in an otherwise smooth surface, such as on skin or fabric. Skin wrinkles typically appear as a result of ageing processes such as glycation, habitual sleeping positions, loss of bod ...

plush toy along with many other animal puppets. Around 1980, she left her art career to move to Carnarvon, Ontario, where she focused on raising her four children. At this time, Senitt patented a number of these toys, and formed Senitt Puppets to manufacture them. They were licensed to Ganz Brothers, and in 1986 to

Coleco Coleco Industries, Inc. was an American company founded in 1932 by Maurice Greenberg as The Connecticut Leather Company. It was a successful toy company in the 1980s, mass-producing versions of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls and its video game consol ...

for distribution in the US. Her work is known for its creativity and sophisticated use of naive forms. Many of her works incorporate unusual human forms, and various series have focused variously on abstract portraiture, her pet Red Dog, and hybrid human-animal forms reminiscent of

Hieronymous Bosch Hieronymus Bosch (, ; born Jheronimus van Aken ; – 9 August 1516) was a Dutch/ Netherlandish painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, generally oil on o ...

Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetism, Synthetist style that were d ...

. '' The Globe and Mail'' critic Kay Kritzwiser compared Senitt to "...Renaissance painters such as

Grunewald Grunewald is the name of both a locality and a forest in Germany: * Grunewald (forest) * Grunewald (locality) Grünewald may refer to: * Grünewald (surname) * Grünewald, Germany, a municipality in Brandenburg, Germany * Grünewald (Luxembourg) ...

(for whom she admits a worship) and Hieronymous Bosch (who impresses but does not inspire her.)"Kritzwiser, Kay "Reviews", "The Globe and Mail", May, 1967. Senitt currently lives and works in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

Collections

Senitt's paintings are held in the following permanent collections: *

Art Gallery of Windsor Art Windsor-Essex (AWE) (formerly known as the Art Gallery of Windsor) is a not-for-profit art institute in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Established in 1943, the gallery has a mandate as a public art space to show significant works of art by loca ...

* Art Gallery of Hamilton *

University of Saskatchewan A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...

Queen's University Queen's or Queens University may refer to: * Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada *Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK ** Queen's University of Belfast (UK Parliament constituency) (1918–1950) **Queen's University of Belfa ...

Trent University Trent University is a public liberal arts university in Peterborough, Ontario, with a satellite campus in Oshawa, which serves the Regional Municipality of Durham. Trent is known for its Oxbridge college system and small class sizes.

Seneca College Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology is a multiple-campus public college in the Greater Toronto Area, and Peterborough, Ontario, Canada regions. It offers full-time and part-time programs at the baccalaureate, diploma, certificate an ...

Canada Council The Canada Council for the Arts (french: Conseil des arts du Canada), commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown corporation established in 1957 as an arts council of the Government of Canada. It acts as the federal government's principal in ...

Art Bank The Canada Council for the Arts (french: Conseil des arts du Canada), commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown corporation established in 1957 as an arts council of the Government of Canada. It acts as the federal government's principal in ...

Awards

* John A. Varney Award, Brockport, 1964 * Finger Lakes Exhibit, Best Female Artist, 1966 *

Grant 1968 * Childe Hassam Purchase Award, 1969 * Aviva Hadassah, First Prize, 1971 and 1972 *

Grant, 1974 * Ontario Arts Council Grant, 1975 * Ontario Arts Council Grant, 1979

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Senitt, Catherine 1945 births Canadian women painters Artists from Rochester, New York Living people 21st-century Canadian women artists