Gerald Squires
Gerald Leopold Squires, known as Gerry Squires, was a Canadian artist born on November 17, 1937, in Change Islands, Newfoundland, and he died on October 3, 2015, at age 77. He moved to Toronto at age 12, studied at Danforth Technical School and the Ontario College of Art & Design, and worked as a stained glass apprentice and editor at the Toronto Telegram.
Squires was best known for painting dramatic landscapes in oil and acrylic, but he also created sculpture, lithography, and stained glass, and he was a skilled portraitist. Much of his work drew from Newfoundland and Labrador’s landscape and culture.
In 1969 he left the Telegram and returned to Newfoundland. In 1971 he lived in an abandoned lighthouse in Ferryland with his wife and two daughters. He served as an artist in residence and teacher at Memorial University and founded Headland Studios with Stewart Montgomerie, focusing on steel sculpture. His works from this period include Studies in Steel, Portraits, and the Ferryland Downs Series. He moved to Holyrood, Newfoundland, in 1983.
In the early 1980s he created major works for Mary Queen of the World Church, a project shown in the film The Newfoundland Passion. He received the Ted Drover Award for Achievement in the Visual Arts in 1984. Squires was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1999 and received the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003. He was also a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
Squires continued to paint, draw, print, and sculpt, and his work was shown widely. Notable exhibitions include Gerald Squires: Journey, a 40-year retrospective at the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador in 1998, and Interior Light at the Emma Butler Gallery in 2005. A 2017 CBC documentary about his life and final painting, I Heard the Birch Tree Whisper in the Night, directed by Kenneth J. Harvey, aired on television.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 20:02 (CET).