Takao Tanabe was born in British Columbia in 1926 and was interned with other Japanese-Canadians in BC during World War II.  He studied in Winnipeg, London and Toyko, and in New York at the Brooklyn Museum Art School where he was taught by the famous German-born American abstract expressionist painter Hans Hoffman.

The artist Takao Tanabe. Image: gov.bc.ca

Takao Tanabe was awarded the Emily Carr Foundation Scholarship in 1953,a Canada Council Fellowship in 1959 and a Canada Council Senior Fellowship in 1969.

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VoCA went to Georgian Bay this past weekend, and we were surprised to discover a work of contemporary art sitting on a rock overlooking the water.

Robert Murray, Pointe au Baril II, 2003. Image: Scott Barker

The sculpture is by the artist Robert Murray, who has a cottage nearby and sits next to a lighthouse that marks the original township/community of Pointe au Baril.

The Georgian Bay community of Pointe au Baril was originally located on the north east corner of Lookout Island and the mainland, where the lighthouse presently stands. Together these two land bodies form part of the entrance channel which begins in open water to the west and threads its way through small islands to Pointe au Baril Station and Shawanaga Bay, a protected body of water that extends south to Snug Harbour and the entrance of Parry Sound.

Robert Murray grew up in Saskatoon. He attended the Regina College School of Art and studied with Ken Lochhead, Arthur McKay, Roy Kiyooka, Wolfram Neissen and Richard Simmons. He also studied at the Emma Lake Artists Workshops with Jack Shadbolt, Barnett Newman and Clement Greenberg.

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Painter Graham Peacock has been teaching painting at the University of Alberta since 1969, when he arrived in Canada from England.

Graham Peacock, Valor, 2003. Image: grahampeacock.com

Perhaps not strictly speaking underrated, Peacock has been exhibiting throughout Canada on a regular basis since 1971. In 2003 he had an exhibition of recent work at the New New Painting Museum in Toronto, and in 2005 had a retrospective at the Ernest Poole gallery in Edmonton.

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Québécoise painter Marcelle Ferron was a member of Les Automatistes, a group, led by Paul-Emile Borduas, that believed that painting should be a result of the abstract workings of the inner psyche released subconsciously.

Marcelle Ferron. Image: nfb.ca

She became well known also for her stained glass pieces, which she learned in Quebec and pursued further while living in Paris from 1953 - 1966; the Metro station Champ-de-Mars in Montreal contains one of her windows.

She was awarded the Paul-Émile-Borduas medal for the visual arts in 1983, and in 1985 was made a Knight of the National Order of Quebec. She was promoted to Grand Officer in 2000, one year before her death.

Marcelle Ferron, Les barrens, 1961- Image: artnet.com

“The only woman to sign the Réfus Global, Ferron championed an approach to art that rejected the figurative and formal traditions of her Beaux Arts training. Her early canvases are visceral studies of the post-war psyche that bare witness to a period of re-birth and reinvention in French Canadian Art.”
(AJ Lloyd, 2009)

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“Art is my life, and the life of my people. I want my work…to live and carry on the rich tradition of our people. I have always felt the importance of passing on my knowledge and my skills….Our art connects us to our past and intertwines us in the present and makes way for the future.”

First Nations artist Walter Harris. Image: canadacouncil.ca

Canadian First Nations artist Walter Harris was hereditary chief from the Gitksan First Nation in northwestern British Columbia. He worked in silver, gold, metal, limestone, silk screen graphics and wood, as well as carving totem poles for his home village of Kispiox in 1971, 1972, and 1978 and for Ottawa, Paris, Japan and Vancouver.

In 2003, he was awarded the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts and in 2005, Walter Harris he received Officer of the Order of Canada.

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Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal Artists

31 OCTOBER 2008 – 22 MARCH 2009

Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa

Kent Monkman, Emergence of a Legend, series of 5 portraits of Miss Chief in various performance personas.
Image: pfoac.com

(Click image above to enlarge)

This group exhibition, drawn from the collections of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography and the National Gallery of Canada, explores representations of Aboriginal people by Aboriginal artists.

Carl Beam, Einstein and Sitting Bull, ca. 1991. Image: archives.gov.on.ca

Artists include KC Adams, Carl Beam, Dana Claxton, Thirza Cuthand, Rosalie Favell, Kent Monkman, David Neel, Shelley Niro, Arthur Renwick, Greg Staats, Jeff Thomas and Bear Witness.

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This book is devoted to Canadian women artists from the 19th to mid 20th centuries. It should be necessary reading for anyone who is interested in Canadian history, and/or Canadian art.

Please don’t let the cover design dissuade you! Keep reading!

Independent Sprit, by A.K. Prakash. Image: fireflybooks.com

“It’s tempting to assume that Canadian women artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries were second-rate, given taht the male-dominated canon of art history has portrayed them as such, simply by exclusion. Independent Sprit helps dispel such tendencies. A.K. Prakash, art advisor to the Thomson family, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Canada Council, and UNESCO, among other, argues convincingly - at times reverentially - for the significance of the 36 artists profiled in this revealing four-part compendium…”

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The 80-year-old Vancouver painter, sculptor, installation and performance artist Gathie Falk has long been inspired by the elements of everyday life: fruit, eggs, men’s shoes, women’s clothing, garden flowers and reading a book, among other things. Her work appears to meld feminine and masculine elements in a unique, charming, serious way.

The artist Gathie Falk in her studio, Vancouver, 1983. Image: lac-bac.gc.ca

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It’s no secret that women artists have been notoriously overlooked throughout the course of white, male-dominated art history.

Christiane Pflug, Kitchen Door with Esther, 1965. Image: christianepflug.com

There are many reasons for this, not least of which is that women’s ability to express themselves was seriously limited before they won the right to vote. For non-asian and non-First Nations women in Canada, this was in 1916 in Winnipeg.

Click HERE to see a 1974 CBC clip of Beatrice Brigden, recalling suffragette Nellie McClung’s famous ‘mock parliament’ of 1914. It’s great.

The early 20th century produced some women artists who are well worth knowing about, for instance Lilias Torrance Newton, Emily Coonan, the Automatiste Marcelle Ferron and the self-taught painter Christiane Pflug.

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Canadian sculptor and painter Sorel Etrog was born in Romania in 1933, studied in Tel Aviv and moved to Toronto in 1963 from New York, where he had been at the Brooklyn Museum of Art on scholarship.

Sorel Etrog, The Hand, 1972. Image: flickr.com

In 1959, Etrog had his first Canadian solo exhibition at Gallery Moos and shortly thereafter, having become a Canadian citizen, represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 1966.

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