When one walks into Jack Lockhart’s home, you are welcomed by a home that is warm, vibrant and celebratory.
Jack’s paintings adorn the wall on the main floor. The workspace, where many of his paintings come to life has its walls covered with pictures of Jack and many of the people who have come to collect his work. When you make your way downstairs, you are greeted by a warm golden glow in which his paintings are on display, along with his wife, Bea’s workshop in which she creates stained glass pieces. It is here, among the many years of work, we sit down and chat about Jack’s impending induction to the Kiwanis Walk of Fame.
“It feels tremendous,” Lockhart says when asked about the honour. “I have been really fortunate over the years to have been recognized in certain ways. This is one of the very, very top. As I said to some of the Kiwanis people, you can’t get more permanent than something that is in cement sitting on a main street. It is a very great honour.”
Jack was born in Selkirk, Manitoba, and it was his upbringing in Winnipeg that fostered his love for the arts.
“My grandfather was an artist back in Winnipeg, and he was a very good artist,” Lockhart explained. “I came home one day and I had a tray of watercolours, and he said to me ‘why did you buy that?’ I said ‘well I thought it was a good deal,’ it was 25 to 30 cents back then. He said ‘you get back on that streetcar, you go back downtown and you give it back. Then you come back with the three primary colours, red, blue, and yellow, and you learn to mix paint.’
“That was my first and only art lesson I have had in my life, and that was how fast it was. But it was so important to learn to mix paint.”
One of his first art exhibits happened by accident. In 1950, the town suffered from a tornado which took down 16 trees near Jack. After the workers came and cleaned up the damage, the exposed trunks became Lockhart’s canvas.
“I thought I could paint on them. I went and did a picture on every single one of them, and then I would watch people come home from work and get down on their knees and study them, and then study the next. That had to be my first exhibit, and that’s where the interest started. Then the interest grew and grew. It doesn’t happen overnight, it takes 50 years or more.”
Hosting an impromptu exhibit on the trunks of trees, to having an exhibit in a gallery is quite the leap, but it was incremental gains according to Lockhart that got him there.
“The first real, true exhibit that we had were years and years ago. I bought frames and I put up 12 paintings of mine in our house, and we invited some people over. I said to my wife ‘either we are going to have some interest in the paintings or we are going to have extra paintings’ and they came in and bought all 12 just like that. I had two people fighting over a painting, bidding against each other for it.
“So I sat back and thought that maybe we’ve got something here.”
Former Prime Ministers, Premiers, Lieutenant Governors, and numerous well-known people in the world of sports and entertainment count themselves as collectors of Lockhart’s work and one of his specialties is commissioned work. Over the years Jack has worked on many pieces including the 100th anniversary of the OPP, West Ferris Secondary School reunion, the 75th anniversary of the City of North Bay and the 50th anniversary of NORAD to name a few.
“Some artists would not do commissioned work,” Lockhart explained. “They don’t like to take the risk and do something that the customer doesn’t want. My philosophy has always been ‘I will gladly do whatever you want me to do.’ I have painted yachts in the Caribbean to the North Bay Battalion because it is a challenge as an artist to figure out how you want to do it and I have never had a return.
“When I do it for you, there is no onus for you to buy it, there is no problem to bring it back. In fact, I want you to live with it for two weeks in your home, in your lighting, not mine, and then you decide if you want to buy it.”
As mentioned, Jack paints members of the Battalion, starting with the 2015/16 season when he painted one of netminder Jake Smith.
“In my life, it has been education, art, community service, sports, my own playing and then music,” Lockhart said. “I have always had season tickets for whoever, Lakers, whomever. The second the Battalion came in, I was right there. I have always had season tickets for the Battalion because I prefer to watch these guys play than the NHL. Every one of these kids is trying their heart out there, they’re trying to make it. To me, that is really something.
“When it came to Jake, I said to Stan (Butler, Battalion head coach) ‘he’s not going to get drafted, he’s small, yet he’s one of the best players. I have really enjoyed watching him play.’ So I was enthusiastic about doing it, but I didn’t know how it would go. After I had done it, I showed Stan and he grabbed the other coaches and they were pleased with it right away.”
At the last game that season, Jack presented the painting to the goaltender, in what would be his last regular-season game with the Battalion. It struck such a chord with the players, that the next day Matthew Santos showed up at Lockhart’s home asking for a painting, and since then Lockhart paints three pictures a year for the Battalion’s overage players to be presented at the final home game of the season.
“At the end of January, they send me photos and I look at all the different action photos. The owner, Scott Abbott looks at them too. It is a process of narrowing down the photos to the ones that I want to paint. My wife frames them and I hand deliver them on game day because I don’t want any damage done to them.”
In the sports world, Jack is also an accomplished curler. Lockhart was able to qualify for provincials as well as Canadian championships, for his efforts, Lockhart was inducted into the North Bay Sports Hall of Fame in 2008.
Lockhart moved to the area in 1952, and aside from his work as an artist and curler, he dedicated his life for the betterment of others through work as an elementary school principal for 31 years, along with his work as a past President of the Rotary club, and District Governor.
“I became the president in ’93 and it was huge back then, 140 members. I was involved when we started with the TV Bingo, I was there when they got into the breast screening. In 1997/98 I became the District Governor. That means I looked after 40 clubs and being involved with all that work. We have a variety of things on the go.
“You don’t do it to seek publicity. It’s like the art. Bobby Orr invites me to golf tournaments because he likes the art, not because I played hockey. You go, and you contribute to the minor hockey there because of your paintings. Youth starts to get involved, everything has to have a purpose like that. When you contribute, I want to know where it is going. You want to know how you are going to help, and those are the ways you help.”
As Lockhart points out, the publicity comes only because of the work people do for others in the community.
“This (the Walk of Fame) is more recognition,” he explains. “The Davedi club gives me the Order of Merit, which is really appreciated. The Sports Hall of Fame inducts me, the university gives me a honourary doctorate, and now the Walk of Fame. Those are all because of the things you have done, that you didn’t do for that kind of reason but at the end of time, it all accumulates, which is really a tremendous honour.”
To see your name etched in stone on Main Street in the town where you have poured your heart and soul into for 66 years must be the absolute cherry on top. The evidence is on Jack’s face as throughout our whole chat, the smile rarely leaves.
Much like the artist he is, now his mark will be left on a part of North Bay for generations to come.
Week one: Ralph Diegel
Week two: Mort Fellman
Week three: Jack Lockhart
Week four: Murray Leatherdale
Week five: George Couchie
