23 May 2024 – Not my personal afternoon, you understand: a borrowed afternoon I don’t yet know I am about to experience.

At the moment I am lost in wonder that the traffic roar of King-George-meets-88-Avenue is so effectively muted by the tall trees of Bear Creek Park. The park is not large, the intersection is just steps away, and yet…

I hear bird song in the trees above, and the gurgle of water below as the creek tumbles its way through all those rocks.

This moment in nature is a fitting preface to my visit to the Surrey Art Galley, for a retrospective of the works of Japanese-Canadian printmaker Takao Tanabe. Born in 1926, Tanabe was interned during WWII, and therefore had to overcome many obstacles before he managed to attend art school in Winnipeg post-war. He went on to build an impressive career, and he is still active today, from his Vancouver Island base, and still in demand.

I move fairly quickly past the hard edges and colours of his 1960s abstractions (works of their time!) and settle with awe into his later, quieter, more contemplative exploration of the natural world that surrounds him.

He captures the prairies (here, Prairie Hill and Cloud, 1980)…

and, with equal resonance, the waters and islands of our west coast (here, Queen Charlotte Islands, the obsolete name for Haida Gwaii reflecting the 1988 date of this work).

I’ve been lost in the works, not thinking about how they make their way from sketch pad to final print. Then I turn into a second room, dominated by three long tables, two of them visible here. Together, they tell the hidden story of that print visible on the end wall: Nootka Afternoon, 1993.

Confession: I am not always very patient with tables of background material! However, I do at least read the key signage. Which, obediently, I do for this grouping as well.

And I am fascinated. Fascinated by the long partnership of these two artists, and all the dimensions of respect embodied in that partnership. Respect for each other, for nature, for art, and for the materials and processes and patient time with which they translate nature into art.

So I do not walk past these three tables. I linger. I move, in my own act of respect, from table to table, block to block.

I also amuse myself with some silly time/space math: daily x 3 months = (1+1+1+1+1+1) = 6 wooden blocks + 20 colours = 1 Nootka afternoon.

Count it out.

One…

and one…

and one…

and one…

and one…

and one.

That’s six.

Together, with the depth of three months and 20 colours, they capture one Nootka Afternoon.

Please note this is not my photo. The combined limitations of my photography and gallery lighting threw annoying reflections into my every attempt. I downloaded this image from the Kelowna Art Gallery website — entirely appropriate, since the Kelowna gallery organized the current exhibition, which further benefited from Ian M. Thom as guest curator.