Blue Irises, 1983, oil on canvas. SFU Art Collection. Gift of Coleen and Howard Nemtin, 2022. Photo: Christina Hedlund
Gathie Falk’s practice meticulously transforms objects of everyday experience — whether fruit, shoes, or concrete sidewalks — into extraordinary things. Falk works in a variety of media that includes painting, sculpture, ceramics, drawing, and performance art, producing work that often feels surreal, uncanny, or dreamlike.
Blue Irises is a painting of an angel overlooking a field of blue irises. The artist returned to painting in the late 1970s after more than a decade away from the medium. Blue Irises is one of a new series of paintings that departed in technique from her earlier expressionist works, with paint applied more thinly, and with more luminosity. As in her sculptural work, Falk focused her painting on her immediate surroundings, most notably her garden, working from photographs. In an artist statement in 1981, Falk said: “almost all my sculptures and drawings dealt with very ordinary objects…the painting is more of the same: making important what is ordinary.” She felt that by representing commonplace flowers on a monumental scale, and multiplying their number, she was venerating them, asking her viewers to reflect upon the beauty of gardens that are routinely overlooked. The motif of the angel appears in her performance work, notably Red Angel, first performed at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1972.
Gathie Falk (b. 1928, Alexander, Manitoba) was born to Russian Mennonite parents. Moving to Vancouver in 1947 with her family, she trained and worked as an elementary school teacher. In the 1950s, Falk studied painting, later exploring pottery and sculpture at the University of British Columbia under local artist Glenn Lewis. Falk was introduced to performance art in 1968 through workshops with American artist Deborah Hay. Repetition of ordinary activities and motifs of domesticity, such as eggs, apples, cabbages, and shoes, were often central to Falk's performance and would appear in sculptural and installation works. By 1976, Falk had produced over 15 performances and developed many of her signature sculptural pieces.
After many years as a sculptural and performance-focused artist, Falk transitioned back to painting for nearly two decades. Since the 1990s, Falk has continued to alternate between two- and three-dimensional work, creating significant papier-mâché and bronze pieces while continuing her exploration of paint.
In addition to over 50 solo domestic and international exhibitions, Falk has received several awards including the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (1990), Order of Canada (1997), Governor General’s Award in Visual Arts (2003), and Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts (2013). Falk has been the subject of multiple touring retrospective exhibitions including two at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1985 and 2000, and one organized and circulated in 2022-2024 by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleinburg). Her works are held in public and private collections, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Glenbow Art Gallery (Calgary), Winnipeg Art Gallery, McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleinburg), and the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto).
Falk lives and works in Vancouver.