Joseph Purcell

Biography:

Joseph Purcell, born in Halifax in 1927, received his art training at the Nova Scotia College of Art.

Early in his career he developed a style of his own with dramatic use of light and composition. At the age of 18 he completed three 18 foot murals for Canadian National hotels and at 23 won the O’Keefe Art Award, a national competition. In the same year he was chosen to interpret Halifax for the Seagrams Collection, “Cities of Canada,” which toured major capital cities of the world. In more recent years, Joseph completed a major collection of on-the-spot paintings of gold mines of Nova Scotia, entitled the Seabright Collection, which now hangs at the Museum of Industry in Stellarton, NS.

Joseph was privileged to go out on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland with the fishermen of Lunenburg, painting them at work in the years when many schooners plied out of that port. He is still captivated by the sea, ships and the spirit that made the Atlantic fisheries flourish. In his landscapes and seascapes Joseph devotes his full effort to an art that reflects the Atlantic scene.

Joseph Purcell’s work has hung in major galleries of Canada, the United States and England. His murals adorn numerous public buildings, historic churches and naval establishments in Canada. Joseph and his wife Tela, an artist also, reside in Lunenburg, NS, where their “family” gallery is located on picturesque Lincoln Street. Now entering his eighty-seventh year, Joseph continues to paint daily with rapt attention.

Source: Town of Lunenburg