BRITISH COLUMBIA ARTISTS  

The Vancouver Province, September 24 1945

Graphic Arts and Sculpture Place in Gallery Exhibition

by Palette

     Many exhibits in the graphic arts, sculpture, water-color and pastel form interesting features, in addition to the main display of oil paintings in the large non-jury B.C. Artists exhibition now being held at the gallery.
     In the graphic arts room two of the finest and most powerful drawings, based on themes in India, were made by the late Pte. August Roozeboom, who lost his life in Holland while serving with the Netherlands airborne commandos.
     This gifted young artist, with a most promising future, was born in Holland and came to Vancouver as a child. He interrupted his studies at the Vancouver School of Art to join the armed forces and was first sent to India where the present exhibits were made. Later the artist-soldier was ordered to Holland where he was killed in action at Arnheim, close to his birthplace.

* * *
     Another interesting exhibition in the graphic arts is Alistair Bell with his strong and well-designed industrial drawings, "Stern Assembly" and "Under the Viaduct."
     This section, which is above the average in quality, also includes Pamela Regan's "Reclining Figure," with its subtle linear expression; Fred Amess' study of horses in "Caribou (sic) Pattern," and James A.C. Dickie's street scene, where all elements in his composition are rhythmically poised in space and counterbalance.
     Also notable are Harvey (sic) W. Parker's "V.J. Night in Chinatown," with its decorative dragon of victory; a small but expressive and dramatic little figure by Muriel Millerd, and Molly Lamb's two lively compositions.
     Of water-colors, good bad and indifferent, there are many and of varied subject matter. Cliff Robinson has been inspired by army life in two compositions of semi-abstract nature, in which there is a personal and creative emotional value.
     There is strength also in Evan Boston's flowing forms and color in an old Ottawa street scene, and in Dorothy Stevens-Cope's "Crossroads," vitally expressive of rural British Columbia.
     Josie S. Wilson shows an entertaining and apparently authentic conception of old B.C. Indian life in her "Assembling for the Potlatch."
     There are a host of flower studies, many mediocre but with a few outstanding examples such as Dorothy Grant's colorful arrangement. M. Denton Burgess exhibits a large, decorated "Birds of a Feather."

* * *
     Among the pastels there are Kathleen Allen's unusual nocturne, with well suggested fore-ground figures gazing at "The Light in the Hills"; Patience Birley's animal studies in very realistic style; Baroness Herry's "Hill Tapestry" and "Winter Webs," both in fine poetic mood, and Irene Catelle Porter's "Symphony," good in tone but somewhat cramped in feeling.

* * *
     Annual exhibition of paintings by B.C. artists in the gallery of J.G. Fraser, 621 Pender, will open on Saturday, September 29, and last until October 13. With the exception of a small percentage for handling charge, all proceeds of sales in this show go to the artists.

* * *
     Recently the Puppeteers' Club of Gordon House Community Centre, under direction of Beatrice Lennie, Vancouver sculptor, put on seven performances a day of "Punch and Judy" in the window of David Spencer's Ltd. on Hastings street.
     Chief purpose of the entertainment was to advertise the Community Chest drive. The show was combined with a window display of arts and crafts by different groups at Gordon House Community Centre.

Clipping courtesy Vancouver Art Gallery Library & Archives.

Home