Additional Images

Provenance:

Graphica Gallery, Edmonton, AB
Acquired from the above in 1983 by the present Private Collection, Edmonton, AB

Note:

Summer Foothills 5/82 was painted two years after Takao Tanabe left his position as head of the art program at the Banff Centre for the Arts and returned to British Columbia to work on his art full time. Jeffrey Spalding describes that move as a way to “extricate himself from the tyranny of his own success.”[1] He had already been making the transition to landscape painting in the 1970s with his Land and Prairie Paintings series. The shift in location and focus allowed him to continue to explore space, light and perspective. Painted in Errington, BC where Tanabe set up his new studio, Summer Foothills 5/82 is among the last of the prairie paintings before Tanabe gradually adjusted his painting method to reflect the more dramatic west coast environment.[2]

Tanabe lays down the paint thinly in Summer Foothills 5/82 to produce an understated yet profound effect. His knowledge of sumi-e, the Japanese art of ink wash painting, is deftly applied in the subtle cast of clouds in the sky on the unprimed canvas and the layers of greens, yellows, browns and blues that make up fields and foothills. He moves quickly after a long planning process, using acrylics because of their quick drying time.[3]

Anyone who has been to the prairies in the summer can attest to the endless sky, the play of light on the land, the blazing heat, and the smell in the air of a looming rain storm, all which have been captured by Tanabe in this quiet and breathtaking scene.

[1] Jeffrey Spalding, “Anatomy of a Wave: Ebb and Flow in Errington,” in Takao Tanabe, ed. Ian Thom (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver Art Gallery, and Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 2005), 123.
[2] Ian Thom, Takao Tanabe: Life & Work, (Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2023), 64
[3] Nancy Tousley, “The Prairie Paintings,” in Takao Tanabe, ed. Ian Thom (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver Art Gallery, and Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 2005), 84-85