Painting Place: The Life and Work of David B Milne

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

It is ironic that a man who typically painted small paintings and
believed that art achieves power by compression should be celebrated in
a very large book that forms part of an even larger project. Painting
Place is the first of four volumes that constitute the David Milne
Project (forthcoming are the Catalogue Raisonné in two volumes and
David B. Milne: Selected Writings, edited by David Milne, Jr.).

Lavishly illustrated with 190 color reproductions and 240
black-and-white illustrations and photographs, the book is
simultaneously a biography and a critical analysis of both Milne’s
paintings and his voluminous writings. Since many of the original
paintings were small, the layout—of small reproductions set beside
text on large pages— works well.

David Silcox is a well-known art historian and arts administrator who
has published numerous reviews and articles on contemporary Canadian
art, a number of exhibition catalogues, and books on Christopher Pratt
and (with the late Harold Town) Tom Thomson. His enthusiasm for his
subject’s work, his thorough research, and his detailed treatment
results in a fine study that does justice to Milne, the “painter’s
painter” and master of technique who once wrote that “[f]eeling is
the power that drives art ... : aesthetic emotion, quickening, bringing
to life. Or call it love ... intransitive love.”