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B01=Susan Mertens
Category1=Non-Fiction
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Category=AGB
Category=BGF
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COP=Canada
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The Owl and the Butterfly: Jack Shadbolt, In His Words

English

An intimately candid memoir about the ambitions, struggles, and achievements of one of Canada's most prolific and important modernist artists.

Why do I paint? I paint because I must.
But why must I? As Picasso would
answer, why must a bird sing?

I want a kind of dangerous art, risking the daemonic
a form emerging out of chaos like a rare monster surfacing from the deep, throwing off
spumes, breathing the air.


Jack Leonard Shadbolt (19091998) was one of Canadas most prolific modernist artists, deeply influenced both by the West Coast landscapes and cultures that surrounded him and by the wider international currents in artmaking. Throughout his life, he remained singularly fixated on the question of how to make great art, bringing articulate and piercing analysis to a life-long search for meaning through his ceaseless acts of art.

He also yearnedas we all doto belong and to be understood. Using excerpts from his sometimes startlingly self-confessional journals, letters, talks, and writings, as well as his poetry, arts critic Susan Mertenswho enjoyed a twenty-five-year friendship with Shadboltcrafts an intimate and candid collage of an extraordinarily driven and divided personality navigating the rapidly changing social and artistic challenges of the 20th century.

This is the memoir Shadbolt never quite got around to writing. See more
Current price €23.38
Original price €27.50
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Age Group_Uncategorizedautomatic-updateB01=Susan MertensCategory1=Non-FictionCategory=ACCategory=AGBCategory=BGFCategory=BGFACOP=CanadaDelivery_Pre-orderLanguage_EnglishPA=Not yet availablePrice_€20 to €50PS=Forthcomingsoftlaunch

Will deliver when available. Publication date 26 Dec 2024

Product Details
  • Dimensions: 177 x 228mm
  • Publication Date: 26 Dec 2024
  • Publisher: Figure 1 Publishing
  • Publication City/Country: Canada
  • Language: English
  • ISBN13: 9781773272559

About

Susan Mertens was born in Toronto and educated at the universities of Carleton Guelph and British Columbia in Canada and the University of Cambridge England in philosophy. She was a senior arts critic for twelve years with the Vancouver Sun and it was early in this role when she first encountered Jack Shadbolt and his paintings. For twenty-five years she and Shadbolt enjoyed a professional friendship talking aesthetics. She recalls: Jack always said he had no small talk but he had a marathon stamina for meaningful art talk. Mertens lives in Lions Bay British Columbia Canada. The research and writing of this book were facilitated by a Doris and Jack Shadbolt Fellowship at Simon Fraser University.

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