New Releases by William Kurelek

Nominated in the nonfiction category for the 2004/2005 Red Cedar Book Awards (British Columbia''s Young Reader''s Choice book award) William Kurelek was an internationally acclaimed artist, described by the New York Times as “the North American Brueghel.” Kurelek’s art was brilliant, but his life was difficult in many ways. Born in Alberta and raised on a Manitoba dairy farm, he suffered abuse at the hands of his father. Critics ignored his early paintings, and Kurelek fought a desperate battle with depression. How did such a tormented man create such a stunning legacy that is enjoyed around the world? May Ebbitt Cutler, who published William Kurelek’s award-winning books and knew him as artist and friend, tells the story of a haunted man, and the art that is his legacy.

When W.O. Mitchell died in February of 1998, millions mourned his passing. Our loss was the lead item on the national news, many newspaper obituaries ran for a full page, and as an extraordinary mark of respect, flags outside government offices across the land flew at half-mast. The man they mourned - and everyone in the Canadian book world whose life he had touched was personally saddened - was known above all as the author of "Who Has Seen the Wind. And this edition - containing the full text - marrying W.O. Mitchell''s text with the art of William Kurelek, has established itself as a classic. Since its publication in 1947, "Who Has Seen the Wind has established itself in the hearts and minds of millions as a Canadian classic. The reasons for the book''s classic status are not hard to find. As readers enter the world of four-year-old Brian O''Connal and his family and friends, they find characters that radiate life so convincingly that the book has a life of its own. No ordinary simple novel, it is the ageless story of childhood told with tenderness and humour and without sentimentality, and the picture of a small town anywhere, drawn with realism and understanding. This handsome edition marries W.O. Michell''s prose with the inspired illustrations of one of Canada''s finest and most popular artists, the late William Kurelek. The 8 full-colour paintings he produced, like the 32 black-and-white sketches that adorn the first page of every chapter, all come specifically from the text, and are illustrations in the very best sense. This edition is a collector''s piece, a beautiful book that is also a joy to read, again and again.

Two months before his death from cancer in 1977, William Kurelek returned to his father’s village in the Ukraine. The Soviet authorities had allowed him to spend four hours there in 1970, and the desire to return had become an obsession with him. In his diary of that trip he wrote, “Let the authorities let me come back to spend six weeks painting the real (to me) Ukrainian people…Those peasants that we met in the collective farm’s fields, the vast rolling fields, speak to me as an artist…let me live with these people as an artist…let me live with these people, dress as they dress, eat their food, sleep on the peech.” During his four weeks spent in the little village of Borivtsi, Bukovina, he had managed with incredible energy to complete 100 drawings and six paintings. They are an extraordinary legacy, a record of a search to understand the world out of which his father came and thereby himself, to solve the dilemma of the immigrant’s son, to know whether he belonged more to the Old World or the New. An extraordinary feature of the drawings is how lovingly they record the simple handmade objects of farm life: the dishes, untensils, tools, and farm implements. The drawings and paintings reproduced here are supplemented with letters written to his wife Jean during the 1970 trip and his personal photographs.

Vingt contes, vingt tableaux, amalgame de rv̊e et de rǎlit, ̌ cristallisš autour d''un mm̊e thm̈e : la Nativit.̌ Ils se rčlament d''un dčor typiquement canadien : a mari usque ad mare. Ce sont les rv̊es d''un enfant de douze ans qui convergent vers une mm̊e interrogation : si c''est arriv ̌l-̉bas, pourquoi pas ici? si c''est arriv ̌alors, pourquoi pas maintenant? Rčit simple, color, ̌ fix ̌sur toiles collectionněs par les grands musěs du Canada, d''Europe et des Etats-Unis.

Billedbog i farver med en del tekst om hvordan tilværelsen formede sig for børn på den nordamerikanske prærie i 1930erne