Halin deRepentigny

Halin deRepentigny is a Canadian painter. He is best known for oil paintings of Yukon landscapes in an impressionist style associated with the Group of Seven. DeRepentigny is also a sculptor and a builder of traditional birch bark canoes. He was awarded the Canadian Advanced Artist Award for a project creating a canoe in the tradition of Tappan Adney.

Life and art

DeRepentigny was born in Montreal, where he grew up in a poor family. He never had any formal art training. His first oil painting was a scene from a Greek village he saw in an encyclopedia, which he sold at age 10. As a teenager, he did portraits in old Montreal in pastels to help support his mother and brother. At the age of 19, he went to Gaspé Peninsula, built a cabin and started a trapline. In 1981, he moved to Dawson City in the Yukon, where he took his partner and infant daughter into the Hart River area of the Peel watershed to run a trapline and live off of the land, first in a tent, and then in a cabin he built. They stayed seven years, and throughout this period deRepentigny continued painting and sketching.

In 2002, deRepentigny left the trapping life and headed to Patagonia for the winter. Since then he spends part of the year in Argentina, when the winter months in Dawson have too little daylight and the weather is too cold to paint. His homages to the past of the Yukon have become a part of the fabric of Dawson with murals, signs, and sculptures on public display, including more than 20 paintings on the walls of the Gold Rush landmark Bombay Peggy’s. When the town hosted the 3rd International Mammoth Conference in 2003, deRepentigny created a full-sized woolly mammoth for the event.

He was awarded the Advanced Artist Award from the Yukon government in 2009 to build a birch-bark canoe and create photographs, sketches and a series of oil paintings inspired by the work. The blueprint for the 28-foot canoe came from 100-year-old designs by artist, journalist and traveler Tappan Adney. DeRepentigny created it as an embodiment of Canada's history and culture, painting it in bright colours in line with the traditions of the voyageurs. The canoe now hangs in Yukon College, accompanied by a mural depicting fishermen on the Yukon River.

DeRepentigny creates oil paintings where natural light plays a crucial role. Landscapes are his most frequent subject, followed by portraits and scenes of life in Dawson and Argentina. His brother and two daughters also paint and draw. DeRepentigny's work has been exhibited in Dawson, Whitehorse, Victoria, Squamish, Calgary and Vancouver.

Permanent collections

Aside from national and international private collections, deRepentigny's works are permanently located in:

• Canadian Art Bank
• Bariloche, Argentina
• Yukon Permanent Art Collection, Whitehorse
• Yukon College, Whitehorse
• Beringia Centre, Yukon