Special Collections

Special Collections

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of the same image. For purchasing information please call (250-492-4484) or email us.
Red dots mean sold and no longer available for purchasing.

 

IRVINE ADAMS: "Ice Forming, Revelstoke Nat'l Park" (left) - original pastel on paper 19.5 x 23.5 Possibly dated mid 1960's. For biographical information and link to many original pastel images please read below. For size and price please contact us.

ABOUT IRVINE ADAMS:

"Irvine was now considered one of Canada's two outstanding pastel painters and was called the second Andrew Wyeth, America's first proponent of 'Magic Realism.' The work possesses all the perfection of technique... and because of this, the serenity and spiritual composure of the work shines through in its simplicity and its serenity. Through Mr. Adams' work we are taken to these landscapes; we are never left wondering on the outside." --Kelowna Courier, 1964. For a fabulous walk-through of Mr. Irvine Adam's life and art, we encourage you to visit the Summerland Museum's and Heritage Society. Their virtual museum offers an excellent insight into Irvine Adams, his family and his beautiful artwork:"One with Nature; The Life and Art of Irvine Adams".

This image, "Eva Lake at Mt. Revelstoke" has striking similarities with the pastel available for purchase and leads one to believe the "untitled" pastel available is also of Eva Lake and possibly also created in the mid-1960's.

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ALBERTO DE CASTRO (1952-1995):
"untitled" oil painting of winter fun, 40x30" painted in 1982 (right)

ABOUT DE CASTRO:

From the simple life in Portuguese Angola to the dizzying heights of artistic renown across Canada and Europe… this is the life, the art and the passion of Alberto de Castro.

Among his first memories in West Africa was the overwhelming desire to be an artist… and his father’s adamant rejection. In his teens, Alberto de Castro ran away from his family in Angola to Portugal, France, and Spain… and soon to Canada. “I used to dream of snow as a child in Angola,” he said. “I had only seen it in the movies but I longed to see its whiteness, its purity, for myself.” (More about De Castro below)

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

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MORE ABOUT DE CASTRO:

He arrived in Montreal in the winter… and experienced snow for the first time. Soon afterward he moved to Toronto and within a few short years was one of “the” naïve artists, whose work was hanging in galleries, corporate offices and government buildings across the country and in Europe. The purity of snow, innocence of children and love of parents were recurring themes in his work.

His partner, Cecile Young Fox, was a renowned aboriginal artist and their collaboration carried them both into the limelight of artistic renown, with sold out shows and avid collectors. Their busy lives celebrated the freedom of creativity with Maxine Noel, Mendelsohn Joe, Norval Morisseau and others.

When Young Fox was stricken with AIDS, De Castro painted a prayer… one of his largest works, a nativity in Canada’s snowy north. It still hangs in Our Lady of Lourdes Church in downtown Toronto and still touches many worshipers there.

It took time, but De Castro recovered from the death of his partner and started painting again – in Vancouver, New Zealand and Australia, and back in Toronto… but, too young, and still in his prime, De Castro died, just seven years after Young Fox.

One of his greatest admirers is Simone de Oliveira, a fado singer and actress, a Portuguese icon for 50 years. She tells us that an artist never dies. His soul lives on in his work… and in galleries and private collections we can still feel the love, the joy and the passion that poured from his brush onto canvas.

Alberto de Castro, born, 1952, of Portuguese parents, in Huambo, Angola, spent his formative years in Spain studying painting before immigrating to Montreal, 1969. Mounting several one-man exhibitions, Alberto won the commission to paint a mural for the Portuguese Pavilion at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games. Alberto moved to Toronto in 1980, where his painting style followed the Näif school. Before he died in 1995 at the age of 42, he felt that “Canada was to him what Tahiti was to Gauguin.” Examples of his work can be found throughout Europe, in the Ontario Provincial Legislature, in Toronto’s Our Lady of Lourdes Church, at the Portuguese Consulate, Toronto, and in the corporate offices of Shell, IBM, Imperial Oil, and Sanyo. In 1985, his paintings were used on UNICEF Christmas cards and, in 1986, he exhibited at the third annual Salon international d’art näif in Paris. Many of his works today are kept at the Casa do Alentejo, Toronto’s Portuguese Community Centre.