Falk, Gathie (1928 - )

Gathie Falk is an internationally acclaimed painter and sculptor. Born in Manitoba, Gathie’s early life was marked by many moves to Saskatchewan, Ontario and back. At the age of 16 Gathie was forced to quit school in order to help support her family but completed her high school education by correspondence. By 1946 Gathie and her mother settled in British Columbia where she was encouraged to become a teacher. Gathie taught for 12 years, ‘gritting her teeth all the way’; after teaching, Gathie took her first art courses at the University of British Columbia. From then on Gathie continued with her art and never went back to teaching. Gathie Falk’s work embraces a number of opposites with any number of interpretations in between: life and death, light and shadow, surface and subsistence, loveliness and ugliness, celebration and lamentation, transforming ordinary objects into extraordinary beauty or terror or both. Ceramics are special to Gathie and she says that “for most of the sculptures I’ve made I have wanted to have soft, undulating surfaces. I wanted them to look as though they were alive: living breathing objects. Clay is the best thing for that”. MOACAT biography image: Gathie Falk, Courtesy of Equinox Gallery, Vancouver BC.