"Okanagan Artists in their Studios"
Patricia Ainslie, "Okanagan Artists in their Studios," book.
BOOK REVIEW
Patricia Ainslie: Okanagan Artists in their Studios (Frontenac House)
Books about artists working in regional settings are rare, the publishing world being what it is these days. But Patricia Ainslie, a former curator at Calgary’s Glenbow Museum, managed to find a publisher for a book that considers the work of 13 artists in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, where she now lives. Her subjects reflect a range of media, styles and artistic concerns with little uniting them other than geography and, in keeping with the region’s reputation as one of Canada’s grey meccas, age. The book is generously illustrated with images of the artists and their work, including a particularly lovely spread of Ann Kipling as she heads into the hills near her Falkland home to sketch. The best-known in the group are probably aboriginal artist Daphne Odjig; former Calgary resident John Hall, a realist painter; and another fairly recent transplant, landscape painter David Alexander.