Laura Brandon quoted in Allison Lawler, “Molly Lamb Bobak was first Canadian Woman Sent Overseas as War Artist,” The Globe and Mail, March 14, 2014 [online]
A trailblazer for women in the arts in Canada, Bobak was an official war artist during the Second World War and was stationed in England. She often gravitated towards scenes of crowd as she was inspired by the celebratory victory parades of the Allied forces at the end of the war. The communal gathering and subsequent energy created in the crowd fascinated the artist and this interest was further explored when Bobak returned to Canada and began teaching at the University of New Brunswick.
Frequenting pubs, sporting events, parades and student rallies, the campus environment offered Bobak opportunity to capture the essence of the scene unfolding. Focusing on this more abstract quality, the artist's works offer more impressionist and loose renderings of the subject matter. Laura Brandon, the authority in the Canadian War Art Program and its artists, explains that Bobak's work “was very personal. It's an art about shared experiences and sharing those experiences. It is almost like conversational art.”
