"Chronicles of Form and Place: Works on Paper by Takao Tanabe"

Chronicles of Form and Place: Works on Paper by Takao Tanabe

Burnaby Art Gallery / McMaster Museum of Art, 2012

Senior British Columbia artist Takao Tanabe is best known for his paintings, which range from early experiments with abstract expressionism to recent large-scale portrayals of the Canadian landscape. But he has also created many drawings, prints and watercolours on paper. These works, at the core of this 104-page hardcover book, offer fresh insight into the trajectories of Tanabe’s painting practice. Denise Leclerc, a former curator at the National Gallery of Canada, in one of three essays, suggests the two directions of Tanabe’s oeuvre fused over time. She says a common thread between Tanabe’s abstraction and realism is “a poetic affinity” that can be seen in the delicate brush strokes, elegant line and subtle atmospheres of his works on paper. Other essays are provided by Ihor Holubizky, senior curator at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, and Darrin J. Martens, curator of the Burnaby Art Gallery. Tanabe, born in 1926 in Prince Rupert, B.C., spent his teens in a Japanese-Canadian internment camp during the Second World War, and later studied in Winnipeg, New York, London and Japan. Exhibited and collected internationally, he still maintains a studio practice in his home in Parksville on Vancouver Island.

The book is based on a retrospective exhibition with upcoming tour stops at two B.C. venues, the Nanaimo Art Gallery and The Reach in Abbotsford.