artist Alan Collier / whose training was on civvy street

Above Alan Caswell Collier (1911-1990), All Is Green and Gold, 1974, oil on canvas. Collier was a Canadian landscape artist. Born in Toronto, he studied at the Ontario College of Art and the Art Students League, New York. During the final years of World War II, he served in the Canadian Army. The statement below is from an interview of Collier by Paul Bennett, conducted in an exhibition catalog, Retrospective. Oshawa, Ontario CA: Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 1971, pp. 14-15—

When I was drafted into the army they asked me, when they saw my background if I wanted to go into camouflage. I decided that if I wasn't going to be a war artist, with a commission and so on, to hell with it; my training was on Civvy Street and I wasn't going to go in and be a private in the army and do art work as a private. I felt that I wanted something better than that, so I just said no, I did not want to go in the camouflage; I don't regret that I went into artillery survey.