LOT 009

OC
1926 -
Canadian

Q.C. Is. 6/95 Marble Island
acrylic on canvas
signed and on verso signed, titled, dated January - February 1995 and inscribed "Errington" and "Marble Island"
43 x 84 in, 106.7 x 243.8 cm

Estimate: $30,000 - $40,000 CAD

Sold for: $145,250

Preview at: Heffel Toronto – 13 Hazelton Ave

PROVENANCE
Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto


Takao Tanabe was born in Prince Rupert, and in 1980 he returned to British Columbia from Alberta, where he was teaching at the Banff School of Fine Arts. He settled at Errington on the east side of Vancouver Island, and his painting approach evolved into a reductive realism. Marble Island, off the coast of Haida Gwaii, is the most westerly land in Canada, and is known for the rough and dangerous waters that roll in to its shores from the open Pacific. It has an interesting history—during World War II, a military radar surveillance station was established there, and it once had a thriving Haida settlement. But in Tanabe’s transcendent painting, the narrative is simply ocean, land and sky, and the moody atmosphere is extraordinary. The sea is liquid steel—its choppy waves conveying powerful movement—while delicate mists and clouds cloak the headlands of the island, which become increasingly shadowy as they move into the distance. In Q.C. Is. 6/95 Marble Island, Tanabe distills a Zen-like essence of time and space—the quintessential West Coast.


Estimate: $30,000 - $40,000 CAD

All prices are in Canadian Dollars


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