New book offers a comprehensive view of B.C. — through the eyes of artist E.J. Hughes
Credit to Author: Aleesha Harris| Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2019 19:00:48 +0000
E.J. Hughes Paints British Columbia
By Robert Amos
TouchWood Editions | $35
Robert Amos’ latest nod to the works of celebrated Canadian artist E.J. Hughes led him on a comprehensive journey of B.C., spanning Stanley Park to Kitwanga.
“In researching the current volume, my wife Sarah and I made three trips across the province, with the goal of standing on the very spots where Hughes created his images,” Amos says of the painter’s extensive exploration.
Their travels saw them stop in destinations they would have otherwise never have gone to had it not been for Hughes’ creations.
“These were slow trips and took us to many places we had no other reason to visit,” Amos says. “And in most every case the actuality of the places was a revelation, very different from what I thought I’d find.”
While the various towns and villages he visited on his tours were distinct strangers to Amos, the man who painted them most certainly was not. Amos was asked to become Hughes’ biographer by Pat Salmon, a friend and aid to the artist, who diligently compiled “ephemera” and biographical information on Hughes from 1977 to 2007.
“In 2010, she shared that archive with me,” Amos explains. “And I have been working steadily toward achieving her goal since that time.”
That ambition saw Amos release a first volume chronicling Hughes’ artwork, titled E. J. Hughes Paints Vancouver Island, in 2018. The release was a finalist for the Bill Duthie Booksellers Prize from the B.C. Book Awards, and shortlisted for the Victoria Butler Book Prize. The latest retrospective, E.J. Hughes Paints British Columbia, highlights the artist’s landscape paintings from his journeys throughout the province between the 1930s and 1970s, along with several never-before-published photographs, sketches and other items from the artist’s estate.
Celebrated artist E. J. Hughes (right), pictured with Pat Salmon, Hughes’ “biographer, friend and chauffeur”, and author Robert Amos in Maple Bay, 1996. Robert Amos.
“As Hughes was a very private person, almost all of what I write about, and much of the imagery, is new to the public,” Amos says.
A third tome on Hughes, focusing on the War Artist years, is already in the works with a tentative release in 2021.
“Hughes was the first, last, longest-serving and most prolific of all Canadian War Artists,” Amos explains of the emphasis for the forthcoming instalment. “I have recently returned from the Canadian War Museum where I was given every assistance in researching the more than 650 works of Hughes in their collection.”
In addition to a greater appreciation for the “wonderful place we live in,” a locale that Amos says, “Hughes loved to the exclusion of almost everywhere else,” the author hopes his latest book serves as an inspiration point for current and prospective creatives.
“I have designed it to provide as much technical information to artists who might want to learn from the example of this brilliant artist,” Amos says. “Wherever possible I have used the words of the artist himself to describe his paintings and drawings, and I hope people will feel a closeness to this wonderful man, as I do.”
While the latest book features a plethora of arresting artworks, for Amos, the ones he finds most alluring are those that highlight the Fraser Valley town of Chilliwack, which Hughes created during a two-week sojourn in 1958.
“The combination of pastoral scenery of the farmlands and red barns, backed by the snow-peaked ridges of the Cascade mountains to the south really speak to me, and with a certain familiarity,” Amos says.
It’s that element of seeing one’s own home city or province through a unique lens that Amos is confident people who peruse the book’s colourful pages will find as engaging as he does. And, of course, if they’re able to gain a better understanding of the man behind the paint brush, in addition to that new perspective of B.C., well, that’s even better.
“People here on the coast know very little about Hughes, as his work was all sold through the Dominion Gallery, to whom he was under exclusive contract from 1951 to 2000, when the gallery closed,” he says. “Therefore, though the paintings are the best description of the places in which we live, they have rarely been seen here.”
“I am working to rectify that, as I believe the artist’s vision of our world is the greatest gift an artist can give.”