Alan Armstrong
- Your favourite hero in fiction?
Huckleberry Finn: A child born into a very racist society, and having no education to speak of formal or informal, he formed his own anti racist outlook, and acted on it at considerable risk to himself. Huck is a a completely unpretentious and pragmatic boy, not too philosophical, and yet he ends up with his outlook and conviction simply by observing the world, and forming his own opinions which were strongly countercultural at the time.
- Your favourite physical landscape?
The hills of Scotland are my ancestral home, but I consider Tuscany to be my lover.
- Your favourite work in our permanent collection?
The Canoe, Tom Thomson. I’m not sure if that’s part of your collection actually, but it’s my fave TT.
- Qualities you most appreciate in an artwork?
Bold colours, and texture
- Great extravagance?
Gave myself 12 weeks in 2012 to undertake a wilderness-based vision fast and wholeness cultivation based on the work of Bill Plotkin of Animas Valley Institute. My second great extravagance is deciding to live from the identity I discovered that year, and that I continue to discover.
- Your favourite season at the McMichael?
Fall. Can there be any debate about this?