EXHIBITION

Close to Home

Homer Watson

February 4 – April 24, 2022
Cayley & Ferrie Galleries

As Canada’s first internationally celebrated landscape artist, Homer Watson was no stranger to travel. Throughout his career, he travelled extensively across Canada, the United States and Europe. While the well-established art scene in Europe tempted Watson, he inevitably chose to return to Doon (now Kitchener), realizing that no place inspired him as much as the familiar landscape of his birthplace. Close to Home celebrates Watson’s love of his hometown, featuring several rarely seen local paintings from the Homer Watson House & Gallery permanent collection.

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The Loch Doon area was memorialized in celebrated Scottish poet, Robert Burns piece “Ye banks and braes O’ bonnie Doon”

Ye banks and braes o’ bonny Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae weary fu’ o’ care?
Thou’lt break my heart, thou warbling bird,
That wantons thro’ the flowering thorn:
Thou minds me o’ departed joys,
Departed, never to return.

Aft hae I rov’d by bonnie Doon,
To see the rose and woodbine twine;
And ilka bird sang o’ its love,
And fondly sae did I o’ mine.
Wi’ lightsome heart I pu’d a rose,
Fu’ sweet upon its thorny tree;
And my fause lover stole my rose,
But, ah! he left the thorn wi’ me.

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