Media Release

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For immediate release
August 2 , 2006

Walter Phillips Gallery shows Takao Tanabe works from permanent collection

Takao Tanabe: Light, Sky & Land • August 10 to November 2
Opening reception: August 24, 7 p.m. • Artist in attendance
Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre • Information: 403.762.6281

One of the most celebrated landscape painters working in Canada today, Takao Tanabe has had a long-standing professional relationship with The Banff Centre. Head of the Centre’s Visual Arts department from 1973 to 1980, during that time he also produced a series of grand depictions of the flatlands east of the Rocky Mountains and the glory of colour gradation the area revealed to him. On August 10, the Centre’s Walter Phillips Gallery will open an exhibition of Tanabe’s paintings and prints from the Gallery’s permanent collection.

Curated by Joseph del Pesco, the work is indicative of Tanabe’s intense period of production during the time he lived in Banff. It centres on the abstract and illusory line between sky and land that marks the prairie landscape. “Takao Tanabe’s paintings and prints engage this abstraction and take it a step further, creating works that are simultaneously representational and abstract,” del Pesco says.

Takao Tanabe: Light, Sky & Land will also feature custom LED lights illuminating the work that will change in temperature and intensity – imitating the rise and fall of the sun over the course of the day.

Born in 1926 in Prince Rupert, B.C., Tanabe studied in Winnipeg, New York, England, Italy, Denmark, and Japan. A gifted teacher of younger generations of artists, during his tenure at the Banff Centre he converted the visual art program from a summer school to an intensive year-round extended residency format for professional and post-graduate artists. Returning to the West Coast, where he’s lived and worked since, Tanabe has received the Order of Canada, the Order of British Columbia, two honourary doctorates, and a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. He currently paints in a studio outside Parksville, on Vancouver Island.

For high resolution, downloadable photos from Takao Tanabe: Light, Sky & Land:
http://www.banffcentre.ca/media_room/images/2006/bsaf/#tanabe

For more information about the Walter Phillips Gallery:
http://www.banffcentre.ca/wpg/