Art BC: Masterworks from British Columbia

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is the
author of several books, including The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese
Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret Laurence: T

Art BC is an unusual collection based on impressive talent and
extraordinary variety. From Haida carvings and Kwakwaka’wakw masks to
paintings by Jack Shadbolt and sound sculpture by Carole Itter, the book
is calculated to surprise and delight the armchair viewer.

Art BC is also a visual and written record of 20th-century art in
British Columbia. It presents in full color 100 works by the
province’s foremost artists. Ian Thom’s introduction outlines the
province’s art history over the 20th century by setting each piece in
the context of its creator’s body of work and the times in which it
was made. This substantial introductory essay, subtitled “A Short
History, 1885 to 2000,” moves from Haida master carver Charles
Edenshaw and such painters as Emily Carr and Frederick Varley to the
postwar modernism of Lawren Harris, Lilias Farley, and Bill Reid. He
proceeds to newer experimentalists such as Gathie Falk and video artist
Cornelia Wyngaarden, then to the serene beauty of Takao Tanabe’s
large-scale landscape with the meditative qualities of Zen painting and
calligraphy. Newer artists such as Laurence Paul Yuxwelupptun, Sharyn
Yuen, and Landon Mackenzie challenge viewers to react with mind and
senses—in short, to grow.

Thom’s penetrating commentary accompanies each full-page color
illustration. Art BC, a book that encourages reflection and growth in
the viewer, reveals that Central Canada no longer dominates the
nation’s art scene.