Banjo Player - Leonard Hutchinson

LEONARD HUTCHINSON, People's Artist. When I was working at the museum in Port Dover, a local resident donated a spectacular woodcut of fishtugs at the dock. It turned out to be the work of Leonard Hutchinson (1896-1980), an artist I hadn't heard of, but who turned out to a sort of Southwestern Ontario Woody Guthrie - telling stories with a chisel and a block of wood instead of a guitar. I was smitten - still am. Hutchinson was born in the UK and moved to Tillsonburg in 1913. He ended up in Hamilton. My sister recently gave me a wonderful (long out of print) book of his work called Leonard Hutchinson, People's Artist: Ten Years of Stuggle, 1930 to 1940. It's full of pictures of commercial fishermen, sawyers, industrial workers, farmers, musicians, and families. he's worth looking up. This banjo player is one of a number of pictures of musicians. It's interesting to note that he's playing a 5-string banjo in what appears to be clawhammer style, and is presumably from southwestern Ontario. I'm guessing Norfolk or Oxford County.

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