John Christopher Pratt Central Committee is a Canadian painter and printmaker.
Education
In 1953 he attended Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick as a student in pre-medicine. From 1957-1959 Pratt studied at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. In 1959 Pratt returned to Mount Allison University to complete in 1961 a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
Career
Christopher Pratt first started painting watercolours in 1952. At Mount Allison he quickly became interested in Fine Arts, especially painting. He was encouraged to paint by Lawren P. Harris and Alex Colville.
During the summers, he returned to Newfoundland to work as a construction surveyor at the American Naval Base at Argentia.
The training he received in precise measuring was applied to his paintings. During this period he began to make silkscreen prints.
The early screen print Boat in Sand, 1961 in the National Gallery’s collection was produced at this time and included in the Gallery’s fourth Biennial Exhibition. In 1961, Pratt accepted the position of curator at the newly opened Memorial University Art Gallery in Saint John"son
He remained at the gallery for two and a half years before deciding to concentrate on his painting full-time, moving his family to Salmonier, Newfoundland.
Pratt was the subject of a major touring retrospective organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1985, a touring print retrospective and catalogue raisonné, The Prints of Christopher Pratt: 1958-1991 in 1992, and a major traveling exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Canada in 2005. His work is found in many public collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Musée d"art contemporain de Montréal, The Rooms, and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Pratt has served on many committees and councils, including the Federal government"s Stamp Design Advisory Committee (1972–1975) and the Board of the Canada Council for the Arts (1975–1981).
In 1980, Pratt designed the Provincial Flag of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Membership
Royal Canadian Academy of Arts]
In 1965, at the age of 30, Pratt became an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (Associate of the Royal College of Art) and a member of the Canadian Society of Graphic Artist In 1969, he was a member of the Canada Council Visual Arts Jury.