Images for the World. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1986.

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IMAGES FOR THE WORLD

As Vancouver celebrates its centennial and plays host to the world audience of Expo '86, the Gallery has mounted an exhibition of Canadian art from the past 100 years. The exhibition shows not only the Canadian landscape and the people within it, but the changing vision of Canadian artists in their approach to both the history of the country and its art. Three of the artists included in the exhibition are Bertram Brooker, Paterson Ewen and Lucius O'Brien.

Bertram Brooker (1888-1955), Driftwood 1945

Bertram Brooker was born in England and immigrated to Canada with his family in 1905, settling in Manitoba. In January 1927 he gained great attention with what was the first exhibition of abstract painting in Toronto.

A year later, Brooker turned away from pure abstraction and began to pursue a more realistic idiom in which he painted for the next 25 years. Driftwood, painted in 1945, shows that Brooker never left abstraction completely behind him. The driftwood stump floats in space, no longer anchored in the earth or washed by the sea, its contours and roots flow with spirit.

Paterson Ewen (b. 1925), Portrait of Vincent 1974

Paterson Ewen is one of Canada's foremost contemporary painters. To convey his vision of a world invested with magical elements, he has established a unique method of working by carving out images on large sheets of plywood, in effect drawing with a router and then collaging on pieces of tin, fabric, and other materials.

Portrait of Vincent is a portrait of Ewen's son, based on a photograph taken at the boy's grandmother's funeral. The photograph was the last frame on the role of film and cut the image off at the head and knees. Written by the artist's son, who is emotionally disturbed, the poem at the bottom of the painting contrasts the violence of the tiger killing out of fear with awkwardness and emotional tension.

Lucius O'Brien, B.C. Coastal View with Figures in a Sailing Boat, 1888.

Lucius O'Brien was the first president of the Royal Canadian Academy and one of the most prominent watercolourists of his generation. Each summer from 1886 to 1888, he took advantage of the fall travel passes given out by the Canadian Pacific Railway to members of the Academy, and travelled to Western Canada. On his final trip to the West Coast, O'Brien spent most of the summer canoeing in Howe Sound just north of Vancouver. In his journal and letters he enthused over the British Columbia landscape and pronounced it to be something approaching heaven on earth.