Alex Colville's tiny studio recreated in his former Sackville home

When you walk up to the modest, white clapboard house at 76 York St. in Sackville, it's hard to believe it was once home to one of Canada's most beloved artists.

Alex Colville and his wife, Rhoda, bought the house in 1949, fixed it up a little and moved in the following year. They stayed for the next 22 years and raised their four children there. 

Stepping into the entrance hall, you can feel the lingering creative energy of an artist. It seems to emanate from every nook and cranny of the house.

"Really, the most significant part of his artistic career was spent in this house," said tour guide Gemey Kelly, the curator at Owens Art Gallery.

"Working in that little attic studio … a studio that he got to by climbing a pull-down staircase, getting up there and closing a sort of trapdoor in the floor. So a very tiny cramped space where he made paintings like Horse and Train, To Prince Edward Island . … The iconic paintings we know now were all done in this little tiny studio."

Mount Allison purchased the house in 1981. It served as a student residence.

Then in 2009, the university opened it up to the public as a summer interpretive centre.

Revered around world

The main room displays photos, sketches and other mementos tracing Colville's career, from publications about him to magazines and LP covers featuring his paintings, including Like Horse and Train on Bruce Cockburn's 1973 album Night Vision.     

The displays give you a great sense of Colville's achievements and how his work was revered around the world.  

But the opportunity for a closer look at his creative process came with an unexpected call last year from the Colville family.

The artist and his wife had spent the last part of their lives in Wolfville, N.S., where Colville also had a studio.   

"When Alex Colville died in 2013, they didn't want to separate or disperse his studio," Kelly said of the family. "It just felt wrong to them.

"So they approached Mount Allison asking if we'd be interested, and we thought it would be a perfect fit for the house."

Kelly went to Wolfville and photographed the studio so she would know exactly where to place everything at the house in Sackville.

Recreated space

In Sackville this week, Kelly went to a door off the main room, unlocked it and stepped inside the room where Colville's studio has been recreated. 

For Colville admirers, it's almost overwhelming to be standing in the creative space that feels like he just left.

His easel and chair are placed just so, the cupboard doors are open to reveal shelves crammed with small pots of paints and brushes, speckles of paint around the easel and work table, a roll of paper towel at one end to wipe his hands, and the lab coat he wore hanging on the original hanger on the door.

"By the time he reached mid-career and certainly by the time he was in the Wolfville studio, he was an artist with an international reputation," Kelly said.

• Alex Colville's studio to be on display in Sackville

"And we know he liked nice things. He drove expensive cars, he had bespoke suits, handmade Harris tweed jackets. He appreciated beautiful things. But when you look around this studio, everything is incredibly modest and small."

Colville built all the pieces himself, except the chair.

"Alex Colville, when he lived in this house and had his studio in the attic, took one of the dining-room chairs to sit on in the studio and his daughter Anne told me he had that chair in his studio till the day he died.

"And in fact she tried to buy him a state-of-the-art ergonomic chair, which he dutifully used for about two weeks and then it made its way into some other room and the Bass River chair came back out.

"So what you're looking at here is a man who built everything for his own purposes. He was left-handed, everything was the height he wanted, everything was the way he wanted it and he never wavered from these materials. So we're looking at the exact same furniture that was pretty much in his studio from the very, very beginning." 

Original studio may be open

Colville House is a draw for art enthusiasts and tourists, but Kelly said the studio will serve a greater purpose for students during the school year.

"I'm hoping that the Mount A students and our plan is to use this a lot, not just fine arts students but all students, to talk about your own creative space. I mean what is your creative space at home, what does it look like, what kinds of things do you have in there, what would mean a lot to you, things you would never change. 

"So I think it can start a conversation about the creative space that one builds."

Setting up the studio in the original, small, cramped, hard-to-get-to attic was out of the question, if the space was to be accessible to the public.

But opening it up someday is not out of the question.  

"If we could make that leap I think it would be incredible," said Kelly. "People ask about the attic all the time, so you just never know."

The Colville studio will be open to the public on Friday, from 1 to 7 p.m. Admission is free.