WANDA KOOP, Steel and Compassion

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Wanda Koop, "Untitled," acrylic on canvas, 2003. Photos by William Eakin.

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Wanda Koop

Wanda Koop. Photo by William Eakin.

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Wanda Koop, "Untitled," acrylic on canvas, 2003. Photos by William Eakin.

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Wanda Koop, "Untitled," acrylic on canvas, 2003. Photos by William Eakin.

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Wanda Koop, "Untitled," acrylic on canvas, 2003. Photos by William Eakin.

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Wanda Koop, "Untitled," acrylic on canvas, 2003. Photos by William Eakin.

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Wanda Koop, "Untitled," acrylic on canvas, 2003. Photos by William Eakin.

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Wanda Koop, "Untitled," acrylic on canvas, 2003. Photos by William Eakin.

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Wanda Koop, "Untitled," acrylic on canvas, 2003. Photos by William Eakin.

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Wanda Koop, "Untitled," acrylic on canvas, 2003. Photos by William Eakin.

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Wanda Koop, "Untitled," acrylic on canvas, 2003. Photos by William Eakin.

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Wanda Koop, "Untitled," acrylic on canvas, 2003. Photos by William Eakin.

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Wanda Koop, "Untitled," acrylic on canvas, 2003. Photos by William Eakin.

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WANDA KOOP, Steel and Compassion

By Amy Karlinsky

Wanda Koop is one of the best-known painters in Canada. After 33 years, she paints with the ease, fluency and attentiveness of a Zen master. Her studios, located in Winnipeg's historic Exchange District, comprise two floors. One is a proper production studio filled with paintings, paint and ongoing projects. The other, just below, includes a vast, white brick wall and space for the contemplation of finished works.

As a visitor, I don't know where to focus my gaze. There are so many things to look at. Small stacks of painted boards and canvases covering long tables are Koop's "notebooks." They are ideas and studies for larger works. Hot pink, bright neon orange and shrill chartreuse shout and sizzle from walls and corners in Koop's studios. It's not just the vivid and intense colours that fascinate. The shadowy and ethereal hues in other paintings shift almost imperceptibly to create vast expanses of water, air and atmosphere.

Koop provides an analogy: "if some of these colours were sounds, they would shatter glass." Koop explains: "I know the psychological implications of colour and I study cultural colour."

After a gruelling winter, I understand what Koop means. I find myself drawn to the hot spicy reds on the walls.

Koop's studio is an international gateway. It holds the souvenirs of travel and the print and photographic documentation of projects completed across the globe. Both the travel and the national and international exhibition record are substantial. Koop's exhibitions in New York, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Venice, other European centres and across Canada have garnered critical acclaim. Cultural commentators such as writers Robert Enright and Robin Laurence, and Governor General Adrienne Clarkson are ardent admirers of Koop's work.

Writing in Canadian Art, Spring 2000, art critic Robin Laurence notes: "Koop has long been acclaimed for the iconic paintings she produces on a grand and fearless scale, acclaimed for the tiny paintings she creates in intimate concert with them, too, and it's hardly incidental that she was featured on the cover of the premiere issue of Canadian Art in the fall of 1984... a prodigy turning out bold, iconic images that both satisfied and unsettled her viewers."

After representing herself for many years, Koop has recently signed on with Mayberry Fine Art in Winnipeg. Mayberry is introducing a selection of Koop's work in May, with a major exhibition slated for next year now in the early planning stages.

"We're very happy to be working with Wanda - part of our mandate is to represent people of her calibre," says gallery owner Bill Mayberry. "This relationship should help to increase the availability of her work for collectors, including some of her smaller, more affordable pieces."

Koop's ambitious projects often combine painting, video and installation. Sometimes, these projects extend for five years, as she elaborates a theme and undertakes the visual research for its completion. Koop rifles through piles of books and catalogues and shows me the paintings of hockey masks paired with the symbols of Chinese opera. I am intrigued by these hybrid pairings of East/West, high culture/sport, and the resonances that Koop finds among them. I look at more paintings inspired by Newfoundland, Lethbridge and the Arctic. I ask her about the influence of the prairies on her development. She responds by sweeping her arms towards the large panoramic paintings where sky and distant vistas predominate.

The new paintings, which hang singly or in groups of two or three on the wall, are about the land and the built environment, constructed with Koop's steely and compassionate gaze. Many of them are bird's-eye-views of shorelines and areas where land meets water. Other paintings indicate the minimalist three-dimensionality of the city. They are fresh from her exhibition at the Leo Kamen Gallery in Toronto, reinstalled in the studio for Koop's examination and consideration. They signal a shift from the recent Sightlines series, excerpts of which were shown in Vancouver, Edmonton, Regina and Winnipeg as well as Toronto, New Delhi and Shanghai.  

In Sightlines, a five-year body of work, Koop uses a conceptual premise - her fascination with the sightlines embedded in viewing devices that bring the landscape into view - in the camera, the video camera, surveillance equipment, or in guided imaging systems used by the military. Such technological demarcations frame our views and construct the landscape according to the criteria of clarity and precision. They are supposed to go unobserved. Koop paints these intersecting circles with the landscape - both the "natural" and the technological.

The recent paintings still insist on the significance and importance of point of view. However, the devices for framing have now become invisible. They are thinly painted in layers of acrylic paint on canvas. The marks are the barest notations of form. Koop's facility allows her to convey much with a limited means, suggesting complexity and spatial depth with a few sweeps of the brush and a refined sense of composition and rhythm. Koop distills multiple glimpses and gazes into fictional landscapes. The paintings are of the world, but not exact sites of known places. They are infused with the artist's concerns about globalization, the relationship of the built environment to the natural world, and the impossibility of such easy polarities as nature/culture. Contemplation and absorption are key to these works. Their subtlety and energy emerge slowly.

Koop's concern with globalization is paired with activism at the local level. Those who aren't aware of Koop's painting may nevertheless know the results of her hard work, determination and vision in the local community. She is also Dr. Koop. She recently received an honourary doctorate from the University of Winnipeg. She is modest about this achievement, "It was recognition for service to the community." Service, it turns out, was based on Koop's 20-year commitment to her inner city neighbourhood and her vision to develop a storefront art centre for youth at risk. Koop not only managed to involve and attract local, national and international artists to give workshops, she also secured the initial start-up costs and ongoing capital funds, generously supported by a Winnipeg philanthropist.

The Honourable Peter M. Liba, Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba in his convocation address noted: "Koop is one of Canada's most distinguished and inventive artists with a career spanning three decades. . . . she is a caring and concerned Canadian. Through projects like Art City  . . . she provides hope and opportunity to young people. Ms. Koop's example reminds me of the words of Sir Winston Churchill, when he said, 'We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.' "

Art City continues to be a vital community art centre. It's free and it has become the template for other storefront art centres across Canada. Koop still raises funds and donations on its behalf.

I ask Wanda Koop what she is looking forward to. She is excited about her recent paintings and the new directions that they suggest. After three years of almost continuous travel for exhibitions, residencies, projects and research, she is pleased to have a stretch of space and time to concentrate on the new work.

Biographical Highlights

Born in Vancouver, British Columbia

1969-1973 Diploma in Fine Art, School of Art, University of Manitoba

  Selected One-Woman Exhibitions in Canada

- Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver

- Burnaby Art Gallery, Burnaby

- Glenbow Museum, Nickle Arts Museum, Calgary

- Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge

- Mendel Art Gallery, Mackenzie Art Gallery, Saskatchewan

- Plug In ICA, Winnipeg Art Gallery, St. Norbert Art Centre, Winnipeg

- Leo Kamen Gallery, Olga Korper Gallery, Toronto

- National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

- Art Gallery of Hamilton, London Regional Art Gallery, Art Gallery of  Windsor, Ontario  

- Centre international d'art contemporain de Montreal, Musee regional de Rimouski, Quebec

Selected One-Woman International Exhibitions

Thetis Foundation, Venice, Italy

The Canadian Embassy Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

49th Parallel Galleries, New York

Canada House, London, England

Amy Karlinsky is a freelance writer and a sessional lecturer at the School of Art, University of Manitoba.