Jack Shadbolt: In His Words

Billed as “the memoir Shadbolt never quite got around to writing,” this book is indeed In His Words, though collaged by editor Susan Mertens into chapters, a compositional method that mirrors the painter’s own tendency to borrow from Eastern and Indigenous motifs, European art history, local poetries, islands, forests and beaches. Those familiar with the stories of BC art know Shadbolt as a 20th-century hinge figure linking Emily Carr and Gordon Smith. This collection of his writing explores the artist as a civilization unto himself.