Robert Markle

  How I became an Artist and almost met Bob Dylan(I sat beside him)

 In 1964 I had a job as Stainless steel tube mill operator having formerly worked as a shepherd And decided to become an Artist. i had always been artistic but I thought I would make it official. How does one become an Artist? I tried to enroll in the Art College of Ontario but they wouldn't take me because I failed Math so I thought the next best way to become an Artist was to hang out with Artists. So I did this

   By now I had found out about 'The Pilot' A tavern at Yonge and Bloor.The pilot was reputed to be the Mecca of Artists this is where most of the famous ones hung out. Barry Hale was the Art Critic of the Telegram and wrote lots of stories about Artists at the pilot. (mostly because he hung out at the pilot)

At that time the pilot was a bit of a problem for me because of the shifts I was on at the factory.

So I show up at the pilot around noon. There are no artists and I didn't even notice the back room. I sat at the bar and had a sandwich and a beer. A guy who sat beside me looked like an ad man, very dapper in a gray flannel suit trimmed mustache gray hair, he ordered a martini. We chatted he was a really nice guy and seemed to know a lot about art. Over the next few weeks, I went a couple times a week and met the same guy often and we became very friendly but I never saw any of the artists Barry Hale wrote about in the Telegram.

One time I asked Jack if any artists hung out there and he said he thought so but they came later in the afternoon and hung out in the back room. I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed the back room, it was like a large dark cavern It had a continuous upholstered seat right around the room with an exit door at the back and a dozen or so table with chairs. One wall was mirrored and the other had a very strange mural. But it was almost in complete darkness. So I started coming at 5 pm and soon began to recognize the ones from the art articles (at that time Jerry Santbergen was the featured Artist)  Robert Markle was an unlikely looking guru he looked like kind of a slob he was overweight, he only wore blue jeans and navy sweatshirt and often rubber boots with a motorcycle jacket and a scarf.  But he was brilliant, wonderful, witty, and sort of a snob.

Markle sort of held court at the Pilot. At 5 he would appear and sit in these funny little corners at the Pilot Tavern on either side. The pilot had benches along each wall with tables for four and 2 chairs outside. But at the entrance, there was a sort of cul de sac on each side of the stairs that they made into a seat like a mini throne. Markle always sat there and woe be on them that took his seat. The inner circle sat up on that side on that day. The Pilot was always very dark at any time of day. The five o clock crowd was very much an In Crowd outsiders were made uncomfortable and soon moved on. I came in as an outsider and was strongly ignored. But I wanted to be in the art scene and persevered and sat off on the fringe trying my best to get any drift of the conversations. I vaguely remember words like ‘ramifications’  that sent me running for a dictionary.  But I lingered on the fringe even though Santbergan was more or less on the fringe and managed to talk to him a few times, he was fairly new to Toronto and had just come from Saskatchewan. One thing I knew for certain if I was going to get into this Artist World I would have to be accepted by Markle. Markle was a bit of a celeb at that time too He was friends with Patrick Watson and was on CBC quite a bit and also wrote articles for the Telegram. 

I hit the Pilot about once a week and met some other fringe artists and CBC people like Bill Mc Neil and Hans Pohl Larry Zolf etc but I was not accepted by the art crowd. I found out later some of them thought I was an undercover cop..

Then one night in February 1966 I drifted into the Pilot at ten o clock. The 5 o clock crowd is long gone. I sat and ordered a beer waiting for my eyes to get used to the gloom. It was not a busy night and not many around. then I saw Markle coming in with some guy. He walked by his usual throne and sat on the bench, a table away the other guy sat down across from him. Wow! he was sitting with Bob Dylan WOW!  I dared not approach and merely nodded as our eyes met. I couldn't hear what they said but I could tell Dylan was engaged and enjoying the conversation

The next day I was at the Pilot at 5 o clock. Markle was soon in his seat bubbling with the news of bringing Bob Dylan there the previous night. There was a mood of disbelief. Markle saw me and invited me over and offered a chair. "Hey man, you saw me here last night with Bob Dylan - right?"

"Yes," I said and was accepted into the in-crowd.

I started going to Openings and soon was invited to parties and studios and smoking dope and all that that entails.

The factory job was a conflict  I wasn't cut out for factory work and it was spring I quit my job and moved to a house on McAlpine near Yorkville (the same street Markle lived on) And somehow got unemployment insurance as an unemployed shepherd. it seemed my Artist life was starting. One of the things that impressed the Pilot Artists is that I was friends with Jack Bush who was the guy I had been talking to at the bar.

In 1965, Markle's paintings shown in the exhibition Eros ’65 at the Dorothy Cameron Gallery were seized on a charge of obscenity, drawing considerable media attention. In the mid-1960s Markle began to write for magazines such as the Toronto Telegram Showcase, Maclean’s, and Toronto Life, publishing widely on topics as diverse as striptease, hockey, childhood Christmases, and Gordon Lightfoot. Markle also worked extensively as an illustrator, contributing images to magazines and literary journals. His work as an educator included terms at The New School of Art (1966-1977) and Arts’ Sake (1977-1982) as well as OCA and the University of Guelph. From the early 1960s, Markle played tenor saxophone and piano in the Artists’ Jazz Band. In 1970 the Markles moved to a farmhouse outside of Holstein, Ontario, although Robert re-established a studio in Toronto from 1979 to 1982. In 1979, he won a commission to decorate a Toronto hamburger restaurant, which was named Markleangelo’s in his honour. His other large-scale commissions include wall sculptures for the Ellen Fairclough Building in Hamilton, Ontario, and the MetroToronto Convention Centre. He executed and painted outdoor murals in Owen Sound and Mount Forest, Ontario. Markle was killed in a traffic accident in 1990. Of Mohawk ancestry, Markle used his mother’s spelling of his surname, although it was spelled “Maracle” on his birth certificate. Markle worked primarily in painting and ink drawing, and also explored photography, collage, printmaking, wooden sculpture, and neon. He collected folk art, which inspired a number of whirligig works later in his career. His work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of

Canada.