Windsor’s William Rapin: From The Group Of Seven To 2010

What makes an artist? Away from the confines of his homey and crowded studio on the 9th floor of a downtown Windsor high rise, would anyone immediately recognize Bill Rapin as one? Regardless, this lively, goateed 79 year old has the training, the experience, the lifestyle and the reputation…so he’s an exact fit: an artist, period. William Rapin is not only an accomplished painter (he often does portraits and landscapes, too) but an art restorer, capable of transforming a faded and partly blank oil study of a little girl, painted in the 1700s, to a bright and detailed object of beauty, scarcely different from when it was created perhaps 250 years ago. Bill has devoted his lifetime energy to art, and it’s a vivid story. His origins are in what is now The Republic of Belarus: a nation landlocked between Poland and Latvia and Lithuania on the west and east, Russia on the north and Ukraine in the south. Bill’s father, Tichon, who was called Ted for short, married his mother, Catherine, in 1919. The family’s surname was originally Rapinchuk, and in the chaos surrounding the Russian Revolution, Ted and Catherine fled, along with thousands of other refugees, to Siberia, where their first child, William’s older brother Peter, was born in 1920. After the birth of a daughter, Katie, in 1925 (the Rapinchuks had in the meantime moved back to Belarus; Katie now lives in Detroit), the family came together in Edmonton, Alberta, where William……back then his formal first name was Vasily……was born in 1931.

Ten years after this, the group came to Windsor where young Vasily entered Grade Four at Gordon McGregor School on Alexis Rd. and then Walkerville Collegiate; he graduated high school in 1950.

A.J. Casson joined after Franklin left the group, and he and Jackson were frequent guest lecturers and instructors at the Ontario College of Art during the time the Rapin brothers studied there.

Says Bill, “They would move among us, talking and suggesting and critiquing and it was a privilege to be associated with members of a collection of artists who virtually revolutionized parts of the art world, especially landscape painting.”

So often these days, when people think of the Group of Seven, the name Tom Thomson immediately comes to mind.

The Group was informally organized before the First World War when Thomson and five others were working together at a design firm in Toronto.

Then A.Y. Jackson and Lawren Harris joined.

Harris’s supportive financial resources were especially welcome; he was one of the Harris family of the MasseyHarris agricultural implement firm.

Still, the name Tom Thomson and his famous paintings “The Jack Pine”, “The West Wind” and others seem to preoccupy peoples’ attention…even though Thomson died in 1917 before the Group of Seven assumed a more or less official status, to say nothing of the widespread recognition which shines on it today.

Bill Rapin chooses his words carefully when he’s asked about Tom Thomson.

“I have a theory,” he says. “I compare Tom Thomson to Tiger Woods: immensely talented, but with a knack for getting involved in unfortunate matters.”

There’ve always been lots of stories and even more questions about Thomson’s death, which was reported on July 16th, 1917, at Canoe Lake……in Algonquin Provincial Park alongside what’s now Highway 60.

There’ve been magazine articles, books and even television documentaries about the alleged fatal accident, because at that time and ever since, things just didn’t seem to add up.

Says Bill Rapin, “As I did with the rest of the Group of Seven, I studied Tom Thomson artistically……his use of colour and shade and image……but as far as him simply falling out of a canoe while fishing and drowning as a result, well……he was an expert outdoorsman and canoeist and a good swimmer. Think about it.”

What Bill also doesn’t mention is that Thomson’s body was found floating in Canoe Lake with a fishing line tied 17 times around the left leg; that there was evidence of a wound on the head; that he was declared dead on heresay evidence only (the nearest coroner, at North Bay, didn’t even bother to view the deceased); and then the body was exhumed two days after its first hasty burial and quickly removed to a family grave near Owen Sound.

There were also stories of dalliances by Tom with various women; one of them being a noted writer of romantic novels of the time.

It’s a parade of questions which will probably never be answered.

“But one result of it,” Bill Rapin reflects now, “is that people love a mystery. It adds sensation and mystique to Thomson’s legacy, along, of course, with the brilliant works that he left us.”

Bill notes that one of many aspects of his profession which were enriched during his time at the Ontario College of Art……by Jackson and Casson and the others……was an awareness that colour presentation had to come, as Bill puts it, naturally.

Asked if he’d been influenced by the Group of Seven he answers, “Yes, of course; one couldn’t help but be. Still, I don’t believe in copying any one artist or group of artists.

At first, Bill Rapin went into commercial work after he received his formal degree: Associate of the Ontario College of Art (A.O.C.A.).

He chuckles as he recalls his premier venture into the world of commercial creation after graduating.

“I worked for a company that made crests. And I was the only Canadian there. All the others were Swiss.

“I eventually changed from commercial art to drawing and painting and that’s when I put a lot of energy into creating distinctive ways of creating and presenting my work.”

Inspired by A.Y. Jackson, A.J. Casson (and, one supposes, even following partway in the ghostly footsteps of Tom Thomson)……young William Rapin had another famous personality enter his artistic life: “Honest Ed” Mirvish!

The same man who, in 1948, started on a shoestring with a bargain basement discount store which eventually occupied an entire city block at Bloor and Bathurst Sts. in Toronto.

But what has art……and Windsor’s Bill Rapin……got to do with a deliberately untidy bargain emporium, lit up as if it had been whirlwinded from The Strip in Las Vegas and where, as one of the hundreds of handwritten signs reminded shoppers: “Only The Floors Are Crooked”?

And all because “Honest Ed” wanted empty properties nearby.

Ed Mirvish was starting to purchase quirky Victorian houses on Markham St. alongside his store, but the City of Toronto wouldn’t let him tear down the houses and put pavement on the land.

So Ed painted the homes every colour of the rainbow and rented them out cheaply to artists and craftspeople.

Bill Rapin says, “I had a studio/gallery there for 10 years, along with other artists and sculptors and musicians and all kinds. Some of them opened little stores to sell what they had created.

“I even lived there, although technically I wasn’t supposed to; I just hinted that I’d been given permission and nobody bothered me after that.

“So there I was: painting canvas after canvas. I wanted to create works of substance, and I have a saying and a practice: I don’t just paint nature; I paint what I want others to see. That’s very important.”

During those times, Bill’s brother Peter was exercising his own creative talents as well.

“At one point, in addition to his monoprinting and watercolours, he worked for a company in Toronto which printed letters and designs on bags, such as large sacks to contain flour and so on.”

Bill points to what’s evidently the front of a flour sack, hanging in honoured fashion on the wall of his downtown Windsor studio as if it were also an art work… …which in effect, he considers it to be.

Indicating the perfectly reproduced colour logo and symmetrical lettering, Bill says proudly, “See that? It wasn’t done by a machine; Peter painted it freehand.”

Through the years, the bachelor brothers lived and worked in both Central and Western Canada, drawn west by the allure of mountain scenery and the endless artistic possibilities it presented.

But at one point, the men’s parents, Ted and Catherine, needed assistance at home, so Bill moved to the family house on Hickory Rd. in Windsor and cared for them.

In the mid 1970s, the brothers were able to move to Alberta: to the Columbia Valley west of Calgary.

“I’d have stayed there, too, if I’d been younger,” says Bill wistfully, “but I had to come back to Windsor so I sold the Alberta place quickly. All I had to do was paint a sign that said ‘Estate Sale’, put the sign next to the road, and the property was gone.”

Peter Rapinchuk passed away 17 years ago. He was 73.

Both artists have had their works displayed in galleries around the world, and Bill has assembled a hardcover book with short texts and full colour reproductions of a selection from their hundreds of artworks.

The book is called “The Artistry of Two Brothers”.

Although these days he busies himself with a combination of landscapes and personal portraits, often created from photographs, there’s another aspect of his Ontario College of Art training which is bringing success and admiration to the work of Bill Rapin.

“I had studied restoration work,” he says, “and I’m proud of what I now do in that field, too.”

Others are proud as well……especially the staff of Nancy Johns Gallery & Framing on Wyandotte St. E. near Pillette Rd., where Bill displays his paintings as well as gaining commissions to restore artworks which are damaged.

Says Dianne Clinton, Gallery Coordinator, “We’re lucky to have someone as talented and capable as William Rapin in our community. He’s the only person who performs this work locally, and the restorations he has done for us have been outstanding……in addition, of course, to his other artistic creations.”

“Before” and “After” photographs of Bill’s restoration efforts illustrate the striking difference between what used to be ……and what can be again.

William (Bill) Rapin: a Canadian original, taught and inspired by Canadian originals, and still as enthused about his profession, and perhaps even more so, as when, as a young man he first took up brush or pencil and discovered that art is a universal language, and he could learn to express himself in it with authority, elegance and a sense of respect and history. WL