The local art community has lost a leader, character and “Renaissance man” who showed other local artists how to succeed beyond Chatham-Kent.
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Leonard Jubenville, a former curator of the Thames Art Gallery, died Dec. 27 at age 82.
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Jubenville, who graduated from the Ontario College of the Arts in the 1960s, spent decades painting with many of his works featured in galleries in Toronto, Montreal, Detroit, London and Hamilton.
Longtime friend and fellow artist Mike Ondrovcik believes Jubenville’s “persistence” and determination to produce the finest work influenced local artists.
He showed local artists you could succeed outside Chatham-Kent, “if you worked hard and you were true to your creative vision,” Ondrovcik said.
Though Jubenville had success at a higher level, he was a founding board member of ARTspace and participated in every group show at the local exhibition space, said Laurie Langford, another longtime friend and fellow artist.
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“He was one of the pillars of our art community and he’s going to be really missed,” Langford said.
Ondrovcik, who met Jubenville while working part-time at the former Windmill Arts store as a high schooler, said he was already the consummate artist back then. His “fantastic” early still lives “were just so detailed.”
Ondrovcik also recalled the many good times had when Jubenville rented studio space from him in downtown Chatham in the late 1980s and early ’90s.
“There was a lot going on (in the local art community),” Ondrovcik said. “I wish there was that much going on today.
“It’s really gone down a bit and without Leonard being a cornerstone and pushing, its going down further,” he added.
As Thames Art Gallery curator, Jubenville often pushed the envelope “as much as he was allowed before somebody would rein him in and then he’d fight about it anyway,” Ondrovcik said.
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And Jubenville loved a good argument, he added with a laugh. “He was a character. . . whether you agreed with him or not, he would argue the point – until the end.”
Carl Lavoy, who was hired by Jubenville as the gallery’s program co-ordinator and later became its curator, called Jubenville a “very complex person,” who loved both art and quantum physics, and had a passion for farming.
Lavoy believes a self-portrait with Jubenville in the middle surrounded by his farm and land, a DNA strand and the cosmos captures the “paradox that was Leonard Jubenville.”
“He was his own person and I don’t think he really cared that much about what people thought of him,” added Lavoy, who visited Jubenville recently.
“I just wanted to let him know how much I appreciated all the things he had done for me when he was at the gallery,” Lavoy said. “He was a good person. . . straight up and honest.”
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Langford and fellow artist Tracy Root helped bring a retrospective of Jubenville’s work to the gallery last January as a homecoming.
“It was a fantastic show,” Langford said. “We were very happy that we were finally able to give him the accolades, locally, that he deserved.”
Jubenville was known for his Chatham-Kent landscapes, but those around Highway 401 and overpasses received great accolades, Langford said.
A graduate of the University of Windsor’s cultural anthropology program, Jubenville was also known as a “fearsome” director with Theater Kent and a creative, inventive set designer, states his obituary.
Jubenville was “a Renaissance man,” good at many things, Langford said. “He was incredibly creative and incredibly visionary and there’s never, ever going to be another Leonard.”
Jubenville is survived by his wife, Sharon, two children and one grandchild, his obituary said.
Donations in his memory may be made to the Thames Art Gallery, it said.
A celebration of his life will be held later.
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