Literature
Avrom Isaacs, “Knowing Kurelek”, William Kurelek: The Messenger, Altona, Manitoba, 2011, page 20
William Kurelek depicted countless scenes of diverse individuals, events and locations across Canada, from the everyday to the extraordinary. A prolific artist, he completed well over 2,000 paintings and drawings before his premature death in 1977. The Canadian landscape had emerged as a dominant subject in the work of the Alberta-born, Manitoba-raised artist after he resettled in Toronto from England in 1959. The same year, he met Avrom Isaacs, of Isaacs Gallery, who invited him to work in his gallery’s frame shop and hosted Kurelek’s first solo exhibition in 1960. In 1962, Kurelek married Jean Andrews and they relocated to the Beaches area in Toronto. By the middle of the decade, in the wake of the country’s Centennial, his landscapes began assuming a more nationalistic tenor. What distinguished Kurelek’s nationalist vision from that of previous Canadian artists was the emphasis he placed on regional and multicultural diversity.
“The Grouse Mountain Sky Ride” by Kurelek depicts the summer activities of the popular Vancouver ski destination Grouse Mountain Resort. The mixed media work is an example of the unique subject matter Kurelek would choose to paint, continuously finding fresh perspectives on well-known Canadian locations. Av Isaacs noted that the painter’s “genius was the gift he had of an endless supply of stored literal images. He had a warehouse of images that were crystal clear in his mind”, an inventory of countless stories ready to be told. Isaacs recalled that Kurelek “had so much to say that he allowed himself only five hours a night to sleep. When I questioned this, he replied that he would have plenty of time to rest in the next world.”
After a fire destroyed the original Grouse Mountain ski lodge in the winter of 1962, the government of British Columbia provided funding and permits for a new lodge and aerial tramway travelling to the mountaintop from the valley below. The tramway, known as the Blue Tram, and later as the Skyride, was opened and inaugurated on December 15, 1966. In Kurelek’s 1973 painting we see the newly built Blue Tram ascending the wooded slope. Today, the Grouse Mountain resort operates two aerial tramways, the Blue Tram and the Red Tram, which is known officially as the Super Skyride.
Kurelek, who spent his youth on a farm in the Prairies, was no doubt highly impressed by the lush landscape and tall trees of British Columbia, which he depicts in this artwork filled with greenery. “The Grouse Mountain Sky Ride” was painted in 1973, shortly after the artist exhibited his Toronto Series at The Isaacs Gallery the previous fall, and thus was looking for inspiration from new Canadian terrain. He would later go on to create the Montreal Revisited Series in 1975. “The Grouse Mountain Sky Ride” serves as a testament of how the artist valued and reflected on all facets of our multicultural national identity.
