Vancouver

First Impressions

After 6 months of stone and brick houses, here I am in a land of primarily wooden houses once more. In the area I am staying in, most of the houses have a basement with some windows which appear at ground level, then the ground floor of the house, topped by another story. The city is very green, or at this time of the year, multicoloured.

The weather has been damp and grey and about11º since my arrival, a season we would call winter in NZ - but that is yet to come here and involves colder temperatures and snow. Vancouver sits roughly on the 49^th parallel and sunrise is relatively late, as in Brussels. The silver lining here is that last night I sat in front of a lovely fire, and there are cast-iron central heating radiators all over the house.

Diana took me for a drive to get an overall picture of Vancouver and that was wonderful, despite the grey, as I am now able to use the bus system and have a good idea of where I am going.

Art GalleryMy first outing was to the Art Gallery. This is largely given over to temporary exhibitions and I found it very interesting and not at all what I had expected. Emily Carr and the Group of Seven focuses on modern (from 1920s) Canadian art, most of which is related to the landscape, and some of which uses thick paint to represent the texture of snow. Roy Arden is one of Canada’s most respected artists and works in the medium of photography. His themes are diverse and he mostly uses the landscape of contemporary Vancouver to illustrate his points. Mark Lewis is London based and his medium is short, looped films, without sound, projected onto a blank wall. Large. This is really interesting. Sometimes it is the camera which moves across a scene and sometimes the camera is still but the scenes move, as at an airport. It has been suggested that he deliberately blurs the boundaries between film, painting and photography. To me, the films are more like still photographs that change a little every second or so. Much less like films.

Georgia O’Keefe (1887-1986) occupied the ground floor. Very avant garde for her time and an unusual use of colour, which was more important than the theme or the object. The exhibition also included two series of photographs of Georgia herself. Apart from the art, the fact that she lived the lifespan of my grandmother, plus 3 years, made it particularly interesting to me. (Wow, she was painting THAT when she was 21? My grandmother was probably taking off to the Australian desert from Melbourne about then.) (For example).

I have, of course, been for several walks. The photos are of the area in which Diana and Geoff live (Kerrisdale) and of the shore front between Stanley Park and downtown, including the ever-present float-planes. The autumn colours are beautiful.

Photos

http://picasaweb.google.com/101628277989220379025/VancouverFirst