Sarah Milroy – författare

"The light in Pratt's paintings seems sentient, a living thing, a pulsation or emission, imbuing the paintings with an erotic and almost mystical desire." — Canadian ArtFollowing a stunningly successful national touring exhibition and a sold-out hardcover edition of the accompanying book, Mary Pratt is available once again in this elegant paperback edition.Says the Globe and Mail, Mary Pratt's "gorgeous, brutal vision of the world is the best revenge against anyone who ever sought to define her."There's something deeply resonant about Pratt's painting for contemporary audiences — particularly for those that are food obsessed. The dark light of a jelly jar, the slippery weight of filleted cod, the dark drippings of a bloody roast, the wet yellow yolk of a cracked egg. Pratt takes these seemingly mundane subjects and fills them with light, giving them a monumental quality, making them seem luminous, signifiant, memorable. For many, they have become seared into memory, iconic in the best sense of the word.Mary Pratt, a career retrospective, features five major essays by columnist and art critic Sarah Milroy, Catharine Mastin of the Art Gallery of Windsor, Mireille Eagan and Caroline Stone of The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, Sarah Fillmore of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and art critic and curator Ray Cronin as well as 75 colour reproductions of Pratt's most renowned work, including Eggs in an Egg Crate, Salmon on Saran, Eviscerated Chickens, and Cod Fillets on Tin Foil.

From black cats to iconic snowscapes, Maud Lewis paints our waking dreams.One of Canada's most beloved folk artists, Maud Lewis was famous in her lifetime for her brightly coloured and endearing paintings of rural Nova Scotia. Working from her tiny, road-side house in Marshalltown, she produced hundreds of small works that captured aspects of rapidly changing country life. Until now, the story of her difficult life has dominated the discussion of her art: her triumph over her physical disabilities and poverty, the harsh treatment she received at the hands of her family, and her alliance by chance with her husband Everett Lewis, who enabled her successful painting career over many decades.This book, accompanied by an exhibition at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, will examine the aesthetic achievements of Maud Lewis's paintings — her serial repetition of images and motifs and the dizzying variety that she brought to the problems of picture making. From her black cats and kittens, to her cart horses and oxen hauling logs, to her quayside scenes of ships in port and the Maritime landscape in all seasons, Maud Lewis made paintings that still delight in their optimism and buoyant vitality.Featuring a comprehensive selection of paintings drawn from leading Maud Lewis collectors in Nova Scotia, Maud Lewis: Paintings for Sale offers a unique opportunity to experience the range and depth of her work.

Winner, Canadian Museums Association’s Outstanding Achievement in Research Award Silver Medal Winner, IPPY Awards (Fine Art)A Toronto Star Holiday Gift Guide SelectionA Like Vision is a lavish celebration of the legacy of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, Canada’s canonical landscape painters. The Group’s depiction of the rugged beauty of the Canadian landscape — from the coastal mountains of British Columbia to the north shore of Lake Superior, the villages of rural Quebec, and the rocky, windswept coves of Newfoundland — charged Canadians to experience their country in a bold new light and changed the face of Canadian art forever. Through their vigorous and expressive painterly style and vibrant colours, the Group of Seven significantly contributed to Canada’s sense of autonomy and identity as a modern state in the aftermath of the First World War.Featuring three hundred full-colour images, A Like Vision includes a lead essay by Ian A.C. Dejardin, Executive Director of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, and contributions by a host of artists, curators, and writers. Among them are Indigenous art historian and curator Gerald McMaster, filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal, novelists David Macfarlane and Jane Urquhart, painters John Hartman and Robert Houle, and Inuk writer Tarralik Duffy.One hundred years on from the Group’s first exhibition in 1920, A Like Vision is both a chance to review the Group’s legacy and a tribute to these giants of Canadian art and culture.

William Kurelek (1927–1977) is a beloved figure in Canadian art, a revered Ukrainian-Canadian painter whose works express his deeply felt immigrant experience and his compassionate vision of humanity. In 1975, he created a suite of 16 jewel-toned paintings titled Jewish Life in Canada in homage to his Jewish art dealer and friend Avrom Isaacs and as a gesture across the cultural divide. Relying on archival documents and photographs from communities across the country, Kurelek foregrounded the role of tradition, community, and family at the core of the Jewish experience in mid-twentieth century Canada. He portrayed Prairie farm colonies; businesses and schools in Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg; and celebrations of festivals and community events at home and in the synagogue. William Kurelek: Jewish Life in Canada includes essays by McMichael Chief Curator Sarah Milroy considering Kurelek’s articulation of the Canadian ideal of multiculturalism and by Executive Director Ian A.C. Dejardin exploring Kurelek’s distinctive framing strategies. The book also includes pieces by David S. Koffman on Jewish life in 1970s Canada and John Geoghegan on Kurelek’s use of photographic sources, as well as an artistic response by Ukrainian Canadian artist Natalka Husar. The volume features more than 50 images, including reproductions of the full suite of Kurelek paintings as well as previously unpublished archival source material, offering a complete record of Kurelek’s working process.

Tom Thomson is the undisputed master of the oil sketch. A towering figure in the history of Canadian art after just five years of professional practise, he stunned audiences with his fresh and avant-garde experimentation, evoking his experience of the Ontario landscape in dozens of dazzling miniature masterworks. Thomson’s death in 1917 triggered the formation of the Group of Seven and the ascendancy of landscape painting as a national preoccupation. Tom Thomson: North Star is the first book to focus on Thomson’s small-scale sketches and brings together a variety of voices to interpret his legacy with fresh eyes. Among them are the McMichael’s Executive Director Ian A.C. Dejardin, historian Douglas Hunter, and Algonquin knowledge-keeper and cultural activist Christine McRae Luckasavitch, as well as a number of contemporary Canadian artists from all parts of Canada. The essays in combination with more than 150 reproductions of Thomson’s painted sketches cast new light on the enduring influence of one of Canada’s most iconic artists.

Générations raconte l’histoire des Sobey, famille visionnaire de la Nouvelle-Écosse qui, depuis trois générations, veille à la valorisation de l’art canadien et autochtone. L’ouvrage accompagne à merveille l’exposition majeure présentée au Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.Générations met à l’honneur des monstres sacrés de l’art canadien du XXe siècle : le Groupe des Sept, Tom Thomson, David Milne, Emily Carr. L’ouvrage propose aussi un tour d’horizon de l’œuvre des impressionnistes du Québec, de Cornelius Krieghoff, des automatistes Riopelle et Borduas, et de William Kurelek, peintre canadien d’origine ukrainienne. Et c’est sans compter des artistes contemporains, dont Peter Doig, à l’expérience internationale souvent inspirée du patrimoine artistique canadien, et des artistes autochtones, tels Brenda Draney, Ursula Johnson, Kent Monkman et Brian Jungen.Riche de plus de 200 illustrations couleur, Générations s’ouvre sur une introduction de Sarah Milroy, conservatrice principale de la collection McMichael, et à laquelle s'ajoutent des textes de Ian A.C. Dejardin, directeur général de la McMichael, ainsi que des historiens de l’art Michèle Grandbois, Jocelyn Anderson et John Geoghegan, en plus d'une entrevue avec Kent Monkman, artiste contemporain.

River of Dreams celebrates the unique ways that Impressionism was practised by artists in Quebec, offering a close look at the work of such luminaries as Clarence Gagnon, Henrietta Mabel May, James Wilson Morrice, and Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté. These artists documented the shoreline of the St. Lawrence and its surrounding regions, from Montréal downriver to Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Arthabaska, Québec, Beaupré, and Charlevoix. The Quebec Impressionists were painting at a time of considerable industrial and social change in Quebec, and their choices about what to paint proved pivotal in cementing an image of the province as a site of both industry and leisure — whether in scenes of the industrial port of Montréal, or others capturing the traditional rural way of life in small villages. Featuring a lead essay by curator Anne-Marie Bouchard; reflections on individual painters by leading artists, curators, and scholars; and more than 175 full-colour images (including reproductions of more than 100 paintings; examples of textiles, pottery, and Indigenous trade goods of the period; and archival photographs), River of Dreams is a magnificent tribute to a movement that shaped Canadian art.

A monument to the talent of Canadian women artists in the interwar period, Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment provides a full and diverse cross-country survey of the art made by women during this pivotal time, incorporating the work of both settler and Indigenous visual artists in a stirring affirmation of the female creative voice.

Dempsey Bob: In His Own Voice is based on the first full-scale solo museum exhibition of this extraordinary Tahltan-Tlingit artist, one of the finest living carvers of the Northwest Coast. Drawing from extensive interviews with the artist by the exhibition’s co-curator, Sarah Milroy, the book presents the story of his life told his own way, including extensive and intimate reflections on the creation of particular works. Gorgeous photographs of the artworks, which are drawn from key private collections in Canada and public collections in Canada, the US and beyond, are supplemented with material from his sketchbooks to create a vivid portrait of the creative process.

Gathie Falk: Revelations, published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition curated by Sarah Milroy, investigates the career of a legendary Canadian artist.Gathie Falk (1928–2026) was born in Brandon, Manitoba, settling finally in Vancouver, where she established herself as one of Canada’s most visionary and experimental artists. Flying horses, rows of potted conifers festooned with blossoms and ribbons, floating cabbages, piles of glossy apples, gentlemen’s brogues presented in reliquary style, expanses of water, or burgeoning flower beds exploding with color—these were the manifestations of Falk’s rampant imagination as she explored the disciplines of painting, ceramic, performance art and installation over the span of a half century. In all her works, effulgence and order were held in a dynamic tension as she worked through her generative themes and variations.A trailblazer on all fronts, she brought a rich sensibility to bear on her observations of the everyday, perceptions often tinged with the surreal and the uncanny. From her fruit piles to the landmark performances of her early career, to her extended pursuit of themes with variations in her painting practice —expanses of water dazzling with light, riotous flower borders set against cement sidewalks, night skies pierced by starlight or obscured by clouds—she found the wondrous in the routine world around her, pursuing her work with a modesty and diligence that reflected her Russian Mennonite heritage.The publication includes an introduction by McMichael Chief Curator Sarah Milroy, lead essay by Vancouver curator and writer Daina Augaitis (who examines her performance and installation works in a national and international context), and a host of other artists and writers, rising to the occasion of this career-spanning survey. This catalogue summarizes an extraordinary career, with full-page images of her artworks and rarely seen archival photos of the artist’s studio, performance works, and Falk herself.For more than sixty years, Falk generated work of extraordinary thematic integrity and material invention. This publication illuminates those connections across disciplines, while also tracing the artist’s journey from youth to old age—from the lushness of the fruit piles, with their sensuous surfaces and dazzling colors, to the sepulchral hush of the night skies.

Winner of the 2023 Canadian Museum Association award for Outstanding Achievement in ResearchA landmark publication bringing together more than seventy voices illuminating the rich array of Indigenous art held by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.Under the editorial direction of Anishinaabe artist and scholar Bonnie Devine, Early Days gathers the insights of myriad Indigenous cultural stakeholders, informing us on everything from goose hunting techniques, to the history of Northwest Coast mask making, to the emergence of the Woodland style of painting and printmaking, to the challenges of art making in the Arctic, to the latest developments in contemporary art by Indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island.Splendidly illustrated, Early Days not only tells the story of a leading collection but traces the emergence and increasing participation of many Indigenous artists in the contemporary art world. This publication will be the largest in the history of the McMichael, and represents a vital acknowledgment of the place of Indigenous art and ways of knowing in global art history.Featured contributors: Barry Ace, Pierre Aupilardjuk, Leland Bell, Dempsey Bob, Violet Chum, Hannah Claus, Dana Claxton, Taa.uu ‘Tuuwans Nika Collison, Alan Ojiig Corbiere, Marcia Crosby, Ruth Cuthand, Mique'l Dangeli, Sarah Florence Davidson, Robert Davidson, Blake Debassige, Bonnie Devine, Tarralik Duffy, Norma Dunning, David Garneau, John Geoghegan, Janice Grey, Haay'uups (Ron Hamilton), Jim Hart, Emma Hassencahl-Perley, Emily Henderson, Lynn Hill, Richard William Hill, Maria Hupfield, Heather Igoliorte, Luis Jacob, Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona, William Kingfisher, Jessica Kotierk, Robin Laurence, Duane Linklater, Ange Loft, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Jean Marshal, Michael Massie, Kaitlin McCormick, Gerald McMaster, Ossie Michelin, Sarah Milroy, Antoine Mountain, Nadia Myre, Wanda Nanibush, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Ruth B. Phillips, Jocelyn Piirainen, Ryan Rice, Carmen Robertson, Paul Seesequasis, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Wedlidi Speck, Michelle Sylliboy, Snxakila Clyde Tallio, Drew Hayden Taylor, Nakkita Trimble, Jesse Tungilik, Camille Georgeson-Usher, William Wasden Jr., Jordan Wilson, Jessica Winters.

Raw, personal and political, John Scott: Firestorm presents an artist's searing critique of modernity’s capacity for industrial warfare and the machines that enable it.John Scott (1949–2022) produced paintings, drawings, and sculptures of what he called "engines of history," the hyper-masculine military and civilian weapons of the past half-century. Surveillance aircraft, B-52 and stealth bombers, tanks, cruise missiles and rockets, as well as handguns, muscle cars, and motorcycles forcefully imprint themselves upon the viewer through Scott's fierce mark-making and large, rough sculptural gestures. Humanoid rabbits—often surrounded by numbers that fail to add up—represent those threatened by such technologies. The dichotomy between the death-dealing weaponry of the nuclear era and the vulnerability of human beings lies at the core of Scott's work.Scott deployed an idiosyncratic graphic language to represent apocalyptic machines and power imbalances, working in the tradition of Francisco Goya, Käthe Kollwitz, Nancy Spero, and others. Scott grew up in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit, Michigan. Like many Canadian artists, writers, and intellectuals of his time, Scott was a close watcher of America, with a front-row seat on a sometimes rogue nation. Stylistically, his work is close to that of his contemporaries Jean-Michel Basquiat and William Kentridge, showing a kindred ferocity of mark-making and dark urgency.John Scott: Firestorm accompanies the exhibition of the same name organized by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, curated by Canadian art scholar John O'Brian. It is the first major exhibition of Scott's work to focus on his imagery of machines and modernity's capacity for industrial war—a body of work as meaningful today as it was when it first appeared in the 1970s. This publication features over 100 of Scott's works, a detailed biography, and new critical writings on the artist.