Lowertown, Ottawa [Basse-Ville, Ottawa]

With rich color and painterly brushstrokes, artist Gerald Trottier conjures a twilight scene illuminated by a lone streetlight and offers us a glimpse of Lowertown in the mid-century. Born in Ottawa in 1925, Trottier studied at the Arts Student League in New York in the late 1940s, during which time he began to depict street life in New York, Hull, and the Ottawa region. While Trottier’s prolific career spanned a wide range of mediums and subject matter, including self-portraiture, murals, and liturgical art, his early practice began with social realist works like this acrylic work on paper, recording scenes that reflected the realities of daily life.