Artist Information
Artist
Colin D. Graham, RCA (1915-2010)Role
PainterDate made
1986Time Period
20th CenturyNotes
ARTIST STATEMENT
"Ever since engaging in modest astronomical research as a youth, my outlook has been to some extent conditioned by modern particle physics. As a result, my aim as a painter has been to develop my own kind of abstraction. Curiously, however, although my paintings tend to start out as abstractions, they almost invariably end up as landscapes. While this fact continues to puzzle me, I have learned to accept it. My subject-matter is derived mainly from the Saanich peninsula [Vancouver Island] and the waters around it, a fact which probably reflects the impact of my earliest influences: the Group of Seven and David Milne."
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Born in Vancouver, B.C., Colin D. Graham was the founding director of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV) and later an artist known for his regional scenes, landscape, genre and marine vistas. He studied medieval history and received his B.A. from the University of Cambridge in 1939 and completed his M.A. in Art from the University of California in Berkeley in 1948. Following graduation, he became a Lecturer in Art History at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.
From 1949 to 1951 he was the Director of Education at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. In 1951 he returned to Canada and assumed the directorship of the AGGV, shaping the institution and its collection as a cultural legacy for the city and beyond. On retirement in 1973 he began painting and enjoyed a prolific West Coast Modernist career working in oil, tempera, gouache, watercolour and mixed media.
He received an honorary LLD from the University of Victoria in 1978 and had his first solo art show in 1980. Graham was a member of the Victoria-based Modernist art group The Limners. He exhibited widely, and his works are held in a number of prominent Canadian and American collections, both public and private.
For further information see -
Mary Jo Hughes, " Vision into Reality: Art Gallery of Greater Victoria Early Years, 1951-1973 (2009), available in the UCBC Library.
![Colin Graham, Director [AGGV], 1951-1973. 1973, acrylic painting by Myfanwy Pavelic Spencer, RCA, OC, OBC (1916-2007): Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Commissioned by the Women's Committee (1985.002.001)](https://d8e7jbdw4fu0e.cloudfront.net/5457/bb9ab080-dfc2-11ed-a655-3f22893682df-vUVFEkr.lg@2x.jpg)