Sold for: $32,450

PROVENANCE
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal
Elizabeth Nichol's Equinox Gallery, Vancouver
Kenneth G. Heffel Fine Art Inc., Vancouver
Peter and Joanne Brown Collection, Vancouver, acquired from the above in 1985

LITERATURE
William Kurelek, Lumberjack: Paintings and Story by William Kurelek, 1974, unpaginated

Of his days as a lumberjack, William Kurelek recalled in his 1974 book Lumberjack for Tundra Books: “Men have gone into the bush for many reasons. The first time I went was in the summer of 1946. I did it to prove to my father (and myself) that I could make it on my own...I was nineteen, in my second year at art college, yet I had hardly ever been away from home...The camp was above Neys, Ontario, directly north of Lake Superior.” Kurelek had great respect for hard work, and he depicted labourers of all types with dignity and authenticity. Into many of these scenes, he folded aspects of his own religious devotion, and here the forest takes on the appearance of a cathedral. It is as if the path cleared by the harvester forms the aisle of the church, with lumberjacks as penitents. The cloud-dotted blue sky draws our eye upwards, just as a stained-glass window or a painted ceiling would in a church, and we feel a shared sense of smallness in the towering forest.

This work is in the original frame made by Kurelek.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars