Ted Godwin

Canadian [1933-2013]

Alberta Society of Artists, Order of Canada, Regina 5, Royal Canadian Academy of Arts

Calgary native Ted Godwin was born in 1933 and raised in Calgary. He graduated from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and Art in 1955 and worked as a neon sign designer and a commercial artist. Godwin was a founding member of the ground-breaking modernist group of painters known as the Regina Five.

Godwin’s work was most often executed within the framework of a series, such as Tartans, River Edges, Rocks, Flowers and Scissors, and Dying Orchids. An intellectual and sensitive artist, his flamboyant life and periods of turbulence often belied the sensitivity of his work.

Godwin is represented in many public and private collections in Canada, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Glenbow Museum. Godwin was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy in 1974. Together with his fellow members of the Regina Five, he was given an honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Regina in 2001, and in that same year he received the Alberta College of Art Award of Excellence. In 2004, he was given the Order of Canada. Godwin died in 2013.