The late Peterborough artist David Bierk’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, which overlooked the ice at the Peterborough Memorial Centre for over four decades, has a new home at the Art Gallery of Peterborough.
On Friday (February 17), the gallery announced it had recently acquired “Portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II” for its permanent collection.
The painting, which was installed at the Peterborough Memorial Centre in January 1980, was commissioned by the Major Bennett Chapter of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE) — a women’s charitable organization founded in Canada in 1900 — to commemorate the chapter’s 60th anniversary.
Measuring 12 by eight feet, Bierk’s painting was at one time considered the largest portrait of the Queen in North America. It has overlooked many Petes practices, OHL championships, and other games, as well as concerts including The Tragically Hip, Gordon Lightfoot, and Elton John.
When renovations were completed at the Peterborough Memorial Centre in 2003, the portrait was removed from its original location but was soon rehung after public protest.
Following the Queen’s death on September 8, 2022, the City of Peterborough stated its intent to determine how best to preserve Bierk’s painting.
According to the original commissioning documents held at Trent Valley Archives, the painting was to be donated to either the Art Gallery of Peterborough or the Peterborough Public Library should it ever need to be removed.
The City of Peterborough provided this information to the gallery’s acquisitions committee, which recommended to the gallery’s board of directors to accept the donation. On December 15, the board approved the committee’s recommendation.
David Bierk was born in 1944 in Appleton, Minnesota and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. He immigrated to Canada and took up a teaching position at Kenner Collegiate and Vocational Institute in Peterborough in 1972. After two years teaching high school art, he began teaching at Fleming College where he remained for five years.
In 1974, he founded Artspace, one of Canada’s oldest artist-run art centres, with Dennis Tourbin and a collective of local artists. He became a Canadian citizen in 1978, and remained director of Artspace until 1987.
Bierk died in 2002, at the age of 58, from pneumonia related to ongoing leukemia. He had eight children, including four with his first wife Kathleen Hunter-Bierk — Sebastian Bach (former lead singer for the rock group Skid Row), Zac Bierk (former Peterborough Petes player and NHL player), Heather Dylan (an actress), and Lisa Hare — and four with his second wife Liz (who passed away in 2006 at the age of 52 from cancer) — Alex Bierk, Jeffrey Bierk, Nicholas Bierk, and Charles Bierk.
“Growing up, I saw my dad’s massive painting of the Queen at Petes’ games, high in the Memorial Centre,” recalls artist Alex Bierk, who was elected to Peterborough City Council for the first time in 2022 and is currently chair of the city’s arts, culture and heritage portfolio. “My brother Zac told me how players tried to aim for it with pucks during practice.”
“I find it special how the painting intersects my dad’s love of sports and his life as an artist, and how it hung over my brother Zac’s head in goal as he played for the Petes,” Alex adds. “The public reacted strongly when it was taken down. I’m so happy that it ended up in the collection of the Art Gallery of Peterborough to be kept safe and continue to live on in our community.”
The Art Gallery of Peterborough’s board of directors and staff have worked with city staff to safely relocate the work from the Peterborough Memorial Centre to the gallery’s collection storage vault. The painting will be cleaned and integrated into the gallery’s permanent collection, where it will join over 100 of Bierk’s other works.
“Whenever we accept a work into the collection, we make that decision for our and future generations,” says Catharine Blastorah, chair of the board and the acquisitions committee. “This painting, which is based on a photograph of the Queen taken during her Silver Jubilee visit to Canada, is a welcome addition to the gallery’s collection, which holds very few early works by the artist.”
