Hornby Island Memories

Philippe Raphanel’s drawings reflect the magic of island life on the West Coast.

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The Gulf Islands – rocky outposts in the Salish Sea between the B.C. Mainland and Vancouver Island – are magical places. Seen in youth, they can haunt your life, their siren call as audible as the waves that drum their pebbled beaches.

Such is the case with Philippe Raphanel. Back in 1976, Raphanel, then a student in Paris, accepted an invitation to visit friends who had a summer place on Hornby Island, off the coast of Vancouver Island’s Comox Valley.

He flew in from Vancouver by seaplane, finding a rustic yet idyllic backwater far removed from the sophisticated bustle of the French capital, where he had grown up. The island captured his imagination with its mossy trees, scenic outcrops and laid-back lifestyle. 

“I did fall in love with Hornby,” he says.

Raphanel went back to school in Paris, returned to Hornby, then went home again. Eventually, he settled in Canada, going on to teach at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver for 25 years.

Although his Hornby friends have since died and he started spending his holiday time elsewhere, he still remembered the island’s indelible charm.

Then, one evening about 18 months ago, after spending the day painting in his studio, Raphanel began to sketch, his memories of that long ago time spilling out as he relaxed on his couch at home.

“It just flowed out of me and onto the paper,” he says.

He kept drawing, eventually filling two sketchbooks, and realized that he needed to continue the project with larger drawings.

Ten of these high-contrast, ink-on-board drawings are on view at Vancouver’s Equinox Gallery as part of a group show called Some Drawings. The show, which runs until March 30, also includes work by Shuvinai Ashoona, B.C. Binning and Jack Shadbolt, who Raphanel met during his Hornby days.

Raphanel’s drawings are representational yet imaginative renderings that evoke island life. Fanciful vegetation winds through them like ropes, merging the foreground with more distant elements. Over all, they evoke the sense of being sheltered by the dense rainforest, peering out through layered depths to a clearing or, perhaps, the twinkle of lights on a distant shore.

The drawings are a tribute to a simpler life, close to nature, and are particularly poignant as development encroaches on the Gulf Islands, shifting the halcyon vibe. ■

The group exhibition, Some Drawings, is on view at the Equinox Gallery in Vancouver from March 9 to March 30, 2019.

Equinox Gallery

3642 Commercial Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V5N 4G2

604-736-2405

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