Gathie Falk Paintings 1978-1984

Johanne McCreath was with St. Michael's College Library, Toronto.

Gathie Falk’s career and her reputation as one of Canada’s finest contemporary visual artists have in part been established because her work is prolific and diversified. Though she was trained originally as a painter at the University of British Columbia, her work has also included sculpture, performance, and installation pieces. In 1978 Falk returned to painting to begin a group of works that developed out of a desire to deal primarily with her garden. This was the beginning of several series of environmentally-based paintings, executed over a six-year period. This slim catalogue, published in conjunction with the touring cross-country retrospective of these paintings, includes a good, concise introduction to the large, accurately produced colour plates. Grey Bellerby, Chief Curator of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, outlines Falk’s desire to unite her life with her art as well as her ability to unite the abstract with the representational. Once again Falk has produced some very interesting, innovative art. In some, she manages to blend the essence of performance with the sensuality of paint. And in most of these large, colourful canvases, the cropped, horizonless landscape origin takes on additional levels of varied emotion and experience.