Women of the London, Ontario, Visual Arts Community, 1867 to the Present
The A Driving Force website is part of McIntosh Gallery’s Canada 150 celebrations. Women artists, supporters, collectors, donors, writers, critics, administrators, educators, and volunteers have been a driving force in the London art community, ensuring its vibrancy and moving it forward.
A university-based, public art gallery since 1942, McIntosh Gallery collaborates with artists, curators and academics to develop innovative strategies to interpret and disseminate visual culture.
Born and raised in Woodstock, Ontario, Bernice Vincent moved to London in 1952 to attend
H.B. Beal Secondary School, where she studied with several influential London artists including Herb Ariss, Mackie Cryderman, and John O’Henly. In 1954 Vincent traveled on scholarship to the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico to take courses in painting, anatomy, watercolour, lithography, and fabric painting. The emphasis on abstraction in Mexico did not resonate with Vincent and when she returned to London she felt a need to develop a more individual sensibility in her art making. In an extra-curricular drawing class she met her future husband Don Vincent, whom she married in 1956. She was producing artwork in the 1950s and 1960s but still struggling to find her own voice.
Read the rest of the biography by Kelsey Perreault at the Driving Force website.
