The curator Sarah Milroy asks, “Was Kurelek celebrating the success of Jewish settlers in Canada or grieving their struggle to belong?” It’s an apt question, given William Kurelek’s bedevilled life. Born in 1927, to Ukrainian Orthodox parents on a grain farm north of Willingdon, Alberta, he was the eldest of seven children. He knew what it meant to be an outsider in a community dominated by Anglo-Saxon Protestants, particularly in and around Hamilton (where his family relocated in 1948) and Toronto (where he studied art at the Ontario College of Art). And he knew hardship first-hand: hardscrabble farm life, mockery at school for his ethnicity and language, and parental disapproval for being physically inept and a dreamer, prone to horrifying hallucinations.
His art was largely representational and narrative driven, though later came some very intense exceptions, such as...
Keith Garebian has published thirty books, including the poetry collections Three-Way Renegade and, most recently, Stay.
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