Life

Pachter got a D-minus in visual art at Vaughan Road Collegiate Institute

Vaughan Road Academy

Vaughan Road Academy is a Toronto District School Board International Baccalaureate school in the Oakwood-Vaughan neighbourhood of Toronto, Canada. Vaughan Road is situated at the Vaughan Road and Winona Drive intersection close to Oakwood Avenue and southwest of Forest Hill. It works in...

. However, that did not prevent him from pursuing a career in visual arts.

Pachter is a painter, printmaker, sculptor, designer, historian, and lecturer. He studied French literature at the Sorbonne

Sorbonne

The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...

, art history at the University of Toronto

University of Toronto

The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

, and painting and graphics at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

Bloomfield Hills is a city in Oakland County of the U.S. state of Michigan, northwest of downtown Detroit. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 3,869...

.

His work has been shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario

Art Gallery of Ontario

Under the direction of its CEO Matthew Teitelbaum, the AGO embarked on a $254 million redevelopment plan by architect Frank Gehry in 2004, called Transformation AGO. The new addition would require demolition of the 1992 Post-Modernist wing by Barton Myers and Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg...

, the Royal Ontario Museum

Royal Ontario Museum

The Royal Ontario Museum is a museum of world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. With its main entrance facing Bloor Street in Downtown Toronto, the museum is situated north of Queen's Park and east of Philosopher's Walk in the University of Toronto...

, and the McMichael Canadiana Gallery

McMichael Canadian Art Collection

The McMichael Canadian Art Collection is an art gallery in Kleinburg, Ontario, Canada, northwest of Toronto. It houses an extensive collection of paintings by Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven and their contemporaries, and First Nations and Inuit artists....

, among others. He is represented in public and private collections in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., France, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, and India. His murals can also be seen at Toronto's College subway station

College (TTC)

College is a subway station on the Yonge–University–Spadina line of the Toronto, Ontario, Canada subway that opened in 1954. It is located at 448 Yonge Street at College Street/Carlton Street.-Entrances:...

, where the Montréal Canadiens face the Toronto Maple Leafs across the tracks. He holds honorary doctorates from Brock University, the Ontario College of Art & Design., and the University of Toronto.

His images of the Queen of England, moose, and maple leaf flag are pop icons of Canadian contemporary art. McClelland & Stewart publications include an illustrated monograph on his life and work, and The Journals of Susanna Moodie, his celebrated collaboration with poet Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...

. He has lectured extensively on the legacy of the Loyalists, John Graves Simcoe

John Graves Simcoe

John Graves Simcoe was a British army officer and the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada from 1791–1796. Then frontier, this was modern-day southern Ontario and the watersheds of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior...

 and the kickstarting of English Canada following the American Revolution.

Mr. Pachter lives and works beside Grange Park

Grange Park (Toronto)

Grange Park is a prominent and well-used public park in downtown Toronto, located south of the Art Gallery of Ontario, beside the Ontario College of Art and Design University , and north of University Settlement House, at the north end of John Street...

 in an award-winning residence and studio designed by Canadian architect Stephen Teeple

Teeple Architects

Teeple Architects is an architecture firm based in Toronto, Canada. Headed by Stephen Teeple, its projects have won many awards, including several Governor General's medals.-Projects:*Toronto Public Library – Humber Bay Library renovation, Toronto, 1996...

. His work is on permanent display in his adjoining Moose Factory gallery.

In summer, he paints in a waterfront studio converted from an ice storage depot on Lake Simcoe.
His 1980 portrait of Margaret Atwood is in the collection of the Portrait Gallery of Canada. His flag paintings hang in the Prime Minister’s residence in Ottawa, in the Canadian Embassy in Washington, in the Parliament Buildings and in the Embassy of France in Ottawa. Pachter’s steel and granite moose sculptures have been installed across Canada. His children’s books, M is for Moose and Canada Counts are published by Cormorant Brooks.

Awards

• Order of Canada
• Chevalier of France's Order of Arts and Letters
• Queen’s Jubilee medal

Honorary Doctorates:

• Brock University 1996

• Ontario College of Art & Design 2009

• University of Toronto 2010

External links

• Pachter Hall and Moose Factory
• "Charles Pachter", Artnet
• "Charles Pachter", Askart