Emily Urquhart in Conversation with Carol Bishop Gwyn on The Age of Creativity

Emily Urquhart in Conversation with Carol Bishop Gwyn on The Age of Creativity

Wednesday, May 5 @ 7:30pm

When Emily  and her family celebrated the eightieth birthday of her father, the illustrious artist Tony Urquhart, she found it remarkable that, although his pace had slowed, he was continuing his daily art practice of drawing, painting, and constructing large-scale sculptures, and was even innovating his style. It has long been thought that artistic output declines in old age. Many well-known visual artists completed their best work in the last decade of their lives, Turner, Monet, and Cézanne among them.

With the curiosity of a journalist, Urquhart began an investigation into late-stage creativity, asking: Is it possible that our best work is ahead of us? Is there an expiry date on creativity? Do we ever really know when we’ve done anything for the last time?

Emily will share delightful stories about her father & her research into this fascinating topic.

EMILY URQUHART is a National Magazine Award-winning writer and has a doctorate in folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her first book, Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family, and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes, was a Maclean’s bestseller, a finalist for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, and a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2015. Her freelance writing has appeared in the Toronto Star, The Walrus Magazine, Longreads, the Rumpus, and Eighteen Bridges, among other publications. She is a nonfiction editor for the New Quarterly and teaches creative nonfiction at Wilfrid Laurier University.