My essay, "Unexpected Revolutionaries," was published in The Arnold Trevor Tolley Art Collection in 2021 but I didn't see a copy of it until 2022 due to the delays and the upheavals of the pandemic. Produced by Glenda M. Patrick, the publication is meant to be a memorial to her husband A.T. (Trevor) Tolley (1927-2018) and a document of the art collection that they built together at their home on the Seven Willows estate in Williamsburg, Ontario.
Cover image: Meryl McMaster, Secret Darkness of Birds, 2016 (detail).
My essay uncovered the way that chance encounters and personal connections are enabled by an approach to art that is open and exploratory in character, characteristics that largely describe the artworks in Glenda and Trevor's collection. In what struck me as an incredible coincidence, during my visit with Glenda at her home, I found myself looking at a view from an apartment I had briefly inhabited decades earlier in Montreal, depicted in a painting by one of my roommates, Christopher Arnoldin. Only now, through reference to the title of his painting, do I realize that we also shared an appreciation of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Postscript: I was saddened to learn of the death of Glenda M. Patrick (1938-2026) and want to add that the Arnold Trevor Tolley Art Collection was a testament to her passion for and support of the arts as well. I have a very pleasant memory of meeting with her and touring her home to survey the collection while researching my essay.
