JG "Capt Greg" Freedman - a life at sea, a life in art

Joseph Gregory "Capt. Greg" Freedman began painting in 1972, the same year he started working for Seaspan, a Vancouver based tugboat company.  “I always wanted to learn how to paint and my schedule then included two weeks off each month so I thought: If not now, when."  Freedman spent the next 30 years teaching himself to paint.  In 2001 he retired from Vancouver’s SeaBus commuter ferries and began showing his work. 

His first one-man show, at Vancouver’s Ballard-Lederer Gallery in 2002, received so much attention that it was mentioned Nationwide on CBC radio twice (on Disc Drive with Jurgen Gothe and again when Susan Westmorland and Paul Grant devoted an entire broadcast of The Arts Report to his show).  Jurgen Gothe was so intrigued by Freedman's work that, in 2006, he wrote a feature article for NUVO magazine entitled: Celebrate the Salt -- Paintings by JG Freedman.

The only boats that Capt. Greg commands these days are the ones that take shape on his easel.  His studio overlooks the Fraser River where the passing tugboats remind him of the career that influences many of those paintings. “Working on the SeaBus was pretty monotonous. I tried to keep myself interested by searching for what made today different from other days - this trip different from that trip.  It might be the way the moon hid in the clouds behind a bridge, or the way a container crane’s shadow fell on the dock.  There was usually something to engage my eye and tempt my imagination. Finding that special something was my challenge all those years on the boats. Recreating it on canvas is my challenge today.”

www.jgfreedman.com

Freedman has also shown his work in Calgary at the Master’s Gallery; in Vancouver at Linda Lando Fine Art and Peter Ohler Fine Art, in Victoria at the Henry Street Gallery and in Toronto at Peterson’s Fine Art.