EBOOK
About
Mary Pratt's art has captivated millions of Canadians. Her luminescent paintings capture reality in a way that few artists have been able to achieve - the chip in a glass bowl, the play of light across a dish-strewn supper table, the vulnerability of a naked woman. Replete with symbolism, Pratt's work elevates the traditional still life by transforming the everyday into the iconic.
Art historian Anne Koval wrote Mary Pratt: A Love Affair with Vision in close consultation with Pratt. The book is informed by extensive interviews with the artist, and her family, friends, and colleagues and by unprecedented access to Pratt's archival holdings at Mount Allison University. This in-depth study of Pratt's life and work explores the complex issues of gender, feminism, and realism in Canadian art, resulting in a richly layered biography of an artist who redefined the visual culture of her period and whose art and life intersect in varied and surprising ways. "Anne Koval's biography of Mary Pratt sings in sympathy with its subject. This intimate and engaging portrait of one of Canada's greatest artists collapses the boundaries between biographer and biographee to produce a remarkable symbiosis of voice and vision." "Koval goes beyond the myths and tropes that surround Mary Pratt's life and art, as she draws upon Pratt's piercing intelligence and her remarkable, felt understanding of the mundane. She shows that, for Pratt, art was an act of love, one that couldn't exist without sacrifice." "Incandescent, a word often applied to Mary Pratt's paintings, perfectly describes this engrossing biography. Mary Pratt: A Love Affair with Vision brings together the artist's archives with deeply intimate interviews and exquisite reproductions of her photorealist paintings. Pratt, an iconic painter of light on food and objects in the grand tradition of Chardin, springs to life, blessed with a sublime interpreter in Koval." "This evocative biography of Mary Pratt illuminates the passionate life and consummate art of our greatest female painter since Emily Carr. Woman, wife, mother, artist - Mary Pratt captivates with her delightful complexity and enthralling vision."
Art historian Anne Koval wrote Mary Pratt: A Love Affair with Vision in close consultation with Pratt. The book is informed by extensive interviews with the artist, and her family, friends, and colleagues and by unprecedented access to Pratt's archival holdings at Mount Allison University. This in-depth study of Pratt's life and work explores the complex issues of gender, feminism, and realism in Canadian art, resulting in a richly layered biography of an artist who redefined the visual culture of her period and whose art and life intersect in varied and surprising ways. "Anne Koval's biography of Mary Pratt sings in sympathy with its subject. This intimate and engaging portrait of one of Canada's greatest artists collapses the boundaries between biographer and biographee to produce a remarkable symbiosis of voice and vision." "Koval goes beyond the myths and tropes that surround Mary Pratt's life and art, as she draws upon Pratt's piercing intelligence and her remarkable, felt understanding of the mundane. She shows that, for Pratt, art was an act of love, one that couldn't exist without sacrifice." "Incandescent, a word often applied to Mary Pratt's paintings, perfectly describes this engrossing biography. Mary Pratt: A Love Affair with Vision brings together the artist's archives with deeply intimate interviews and exquisite reproductions of her photorealist paintings. Pratt, an iconic painter of light on food and objects in the grand tradition of Chardin, springs to life, blessed with a sublime interpreter in Koval." "This evocative biography of Mary Pratt illuminates the passionate life and consummate art of our greatest female painter since Emily Carr. Woman, wife, mother, artist - Mary Pratt captivates with her delightful complexity and enthralling vision."