Sold for: $145,250

PROVENANCE
Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto
By descent to the present Private Collection, Ontario

LITERATURE
George F. MacDonald, Haida Monumental Art: Villages of the Queen Charlotte Islands, 1983, page 11
Ian M. Thom et al., Takao Tanabe, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2005, page 135

After moving to Vancouver Island in 1980, Takao Tanabe began a series of exquisitely atmospheric coastal landscapes. While traveling by boat between the mainland and the Island, he was inspired by long views over the ocean of distant islands and mountains enshrouded by rain, sea mists and low clouds—constantly changing and transforming. He began painting with a reductive realism that captured the essence of British Columbia’s coastal landscape, using a distinctive cool-toned palette. In this South Moresby view, verdant islands and snow-capped mountains are seen at a distance—enticing and mysterious—and the ocean is tinted a delicate grey-mauve. Tanabe captures the moody weather of BC’s rugged coastline with such visual poetry that Ian Thom called him “the Turner of the Queen Charlottes.”

Tanabe titled this painting with its specific geography - South Moresby Island at Skincuttle Bay in Haida Gwaii. In Skincuttle Bay at Lake Inlet is a reef called Xa’gi, a place connected to the Haida Raven cycle of myths. George MacDonald notes that from this place, known as “an alternating or intermediate state, between light and dark colours…the Raven lineage came out of the womb of Foam-Woman.”

All prices are in Canadian Dollars