"At the window, the sound of waves crashing on the beach has a rhythm, and as you close your eyes, that sound begins to vibrate, it blurs into a heavy pulsing sound of wheels pounding over the gaps in the steel rails. It passes. You hear the wind rush through the tall dry marsh grass, feel it pull at your clothes, drawing you inland, after the dark horse, and the girl keeps watching. The sound peaks, it becomes a cry. It is the last thing you will ever and always hear." — Andrew Hunter
Colville is a book like no other.
Designed to accompany an exhibition at the Art Gallery Ontario, Colville honours the iconic Canadian artist's legacy and explores the continuing impact of his work on film, literature, and music.
Known for painting decidedly personal subject matter, Colville's painstakingly precise images depict an elusive tension, capturing moments perpetually on the edge of change and the unknown. Featuring more than 100 reproductions, Colville will feature works assembled from museums and private collections nationwide. Spanning the entirety of Colville's career, the works will include many works that have never been have never been reproduced before this moment as well as his most iconic paintings, including Horse and Train, 1953; To Prince Edward Island, 1965; Woman in Bathtub, 1973; and Target Pistol and Man, 1980.
Colville was a painter, printmaker, and war veteran who drew his inspiration from the world around him, transforming the seemingly mundane figures and events of everyday life into archetypes of the modern condition. He was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1982 and won a Governor General's Visual and Media Arts Award in 2003.

Colville

Arts & Photography

Hunter, Andrew

History & Criticism

Goose Lane Editions

"Andrew Hunter has looked with fresh eyes at [Colville's] paintings and made a coherent argument that Colville deserves to be understood far beyond the normal borders of the art world." — Robert Fulford, The National Post This magnificent, best-selling volume is now available in a deluxe paper-bound edition. The original hardcover edition sold more than 15,000 copies. Colville both honours the legacy of an iconic Canadian artist and explores the contemporary reverberations of his work. Colville was known for being his own man. His paintings depict an elusive tension, a deep sense of danger, capturing moments perpetually on the edge of the unknown. A painter, printmaker, and war artist who drew his inspiration from the world around him, Colville transformed the seemingly mundane events of everyday life into archetypes of the modern condition. In this beautifully designed volume, Andrew Hunter organizes Colville thematically, incorporating interludes that explore the relationship between Colville's work and the filmmaking of Wes Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, and Sarah Polley, as well as his influence on writers such as Alice Munro and even cartoonist David Collier. The book is rounded out with more than 100 colour reproductions of Colville's paintings, spanning the entirety of his career, including Horse and Train, 1953; To Prince Edward Island, 1965; Woman in Bathtub, 1973; and Target Pistol and Man, 1980.

Individual Artists

Review “A thoroughly researched, self-reflective, soulful meditation on the life of Sophia Burthen, who was enslaved in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century Canada. Hunter’s book is a searing indictment of the historic and ongoing racism experienced by Indigenous and Black Peoples in Canada and the United States. To read it is to peer into the kind but unflinching heart of a white ally who is committed to recognizing, contextualizing, and confronting injustice in the Americas.” -- Lawrence Hill, bestselling author of The Book of Negroes“Andrew Hunter’s deep dive into Canadian and American history goes down trails and pathways not always explored. He has managed to bring to life history that affects us all. Sophia Burthen’s existence as a Black enslaved child is examined and Hunter directs the reader to know her sensitively and intimately. I am grateful to Hunter for ripping apart the archives and finding details that are left unanswered.” -- Shelley Niro, Governor General’s Award-winning artist and filmmaker“Through the narrative of Sophia Burthen, Andrew Hunter completely reframes Canadian history — as well as the history of his hometown Hamilton — and turns it on its head. Readers, perhaps for the first time, see the world through the eyes of Burthen and her Black contemporaries, through their plight of enslavement, their liberation, and their presence on these shores. This work, coming at a moment of racial reckoning, is timely and important.” -- Adrienne Shadd, author of The Journey from Tollgate to Parkway“It Was Dark There All the Time is exhaustively researched and intriguingly wide in scope. ... Out of the scant details that we have of an enslaved woman’s life, Hunter and his editors have built a kind of epic reckoning and, for Hunter, a personal one, drawing as he does on elements of his own life.” -- Jeff Mahoney ― Hamilton Specter“It Was Dark There All the Time is a book to read slowly, to think about and to learn from, to be read carefully more than once. Hunter brings a critical eye to the research and the emotional and mental work needed to share these stories.” -- Julie Kenter ― Winnipeg Free Press Product Description “My parents were slaves in New York State. My master’s sons-in-law … came into the garden where my sister and I were playing among the currant bushes, tied their handkerchiefs over our mouths, carried us to a vessel, put us in the hold, and sailed up the river. I know not how far nor how long — it was dark there all the time.”Sophia Burthen’s account of her arrival as an enslaved person into what is now Canada sometime in the late 18th century, was recorded by Benjamin Drew in 1855. In It Was Dark There All the Time, writer and curator Andrew Hunter builds on the testimony of Drew’s interview to piece together Burthen’s life, while reckoning with the legacy of whiteness and colonialism in the recording of her story. In so doing, Hunter demonstrates the role that the slave trade played in pre-Confederation Canada and its continuing impact on contemporary Canadian society.Evocatively written with sharp, incisive observations and illustrated with archival images and contemporary works of art, It Was Dark There All the Time offers a necessary correction to the prevailing perception of Canada as a place unsullied by slavery and its legacy. About the Author Andrew Hunter is a freelance curator, artist, writer, and educator. Hunter was previously the Frederik S. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where he produced major exhibitions and publications including Every Now Then: Reframing Nationhood, In the Ward: Lawren Harris, Toronto & the Idea of North, and Colville.Born in Hamilton and a graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, Hunter has held curatorial positions across Canada, including at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. He has taught at the Ontario College of Art and Design University and the University of Waterloo

It Was Dark There All the Time: Sophia Burthen and the Legacy of Slavery in Canada

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Published in conjunction with an exhibition sponsored by the Americas Society, September-November 2000, featuring the work of Canadian artist Harris (d.1970). He was best known for founding the Group of Seven in Canada during the 1920s. Later he transformed from a nationalist representational painter to an important contributor to modernism in the US, sustaining his abstract approach even when he returned to live in Canada for the last 30 years of his life. Fifty-two color plates are accompanied by several interpretive and biographical essays, including one by Hunter, the exhibition's curator. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Lawren Stewart Harris: A Painter's Progress

Americas Society

The Polar Worldcombines fantasy and reality: giant squids, hybrids, and humanoid figures dance across Ashoona's sensual vistas, lending a surreal quality to her work. Springing her imagination but rooted in the landscape of her Kinngait home, The Polar Worldcombines Ashoona's drawings from her 2017 exhibition with a narrative by Andrew Hunter.

The Polar World

Art Gallery of Ontario

Sword of the Spellbreaker (The Songreaver's Tale Series)

Children's Books

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Independently published

Black Wolf’s Bargain (The Songreaver's Tale Series)

This generously illustrated book examines the most significant period in the work of Lawren Harris, who was central to defining a distinctive Canadian art in the 20th century. Sparse landscapes of Lake Superior’s northern shores, bold visions of the Rocky Mountains and haunting landscapes from the Eastern Arctic are hallmark themes of Lawren Harris’s paintings. He was a founding member of the renowned “Group of Seven” artists’ group, who believed that the Canadian landscape was central to the foundation of a national identity. Focusing on Harris’s most important work of the 1920s through the early 1930s, this monograph features a selection of major works that are as iconic in Canada as those of Georgia O’Keeffe and Edward Hopper in the U.S. His remarkable use of color, light, and composition resulted in powerful scenes that reflect his progress toward a universal vision of nature’s spiritual power. Drawn from the Art Gallery of Ontario’s substantial holdings as well as other public collections throughout Canada, this publication repositions Harris’s work and establishes him as major figure within the wider context of 20th-century modern painting in the Americas.

The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris

Quinn, Karen

Burlingham, Cynthia

Martin,Steve

Prestel

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