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| | ARTIST NAME: | Tosh, Bev | | ACCESSION NUMBER: | 1993.118.002 | | TITLE: | SPEAK NO EVIL (II) | | DATE: | 1991 | | CATEGORY: | Mixed Media | | MEDIUM: | mixed media
graphite, acrylic,
thread, oil stick
silver point | | SUPPORT: | paper | | DIMENSIONS: | Image: 110 x 51 cm (43 5/16 x 20 1/16 in.)
Sheet: 112.7 x 52.2 cm (44 3/8 x 20 9/16 in.) | | COLLECTION: | Alberta Foundation for the Arts |
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| | OTHER HOLDINGS: | Tosh, Bev | | ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | The daughter of a New Zealand WW II pilot stationed in Canada, and his Canadian bride, Bev Tosh may be best known for her series on the theme of war brides, a vanishing and under-appreciated generation. She spent her early childhood in New Zealand, but returned to Canada with her mother and sister at the age of nine, later earning a BA in Fine Art and Psychology from the University of Saskatchewan in 1968. She went on to gain a Diploma with Distinction from ACAD in 1985, and an MFA in Painting from the University of Calgary in 1987. She then established herself as a figurative painter and a lecturer at ACAD and the University of Calgary.
Bev has always been interested in the psychology of the figure just below the surface of the skin – or the paint. Her work focuses on women’s lives generally, and on rites of passage. She created a series on women surfacing from underwater (part of her thesis exhibition, 1987), rich in symbolic associations. She also produced icon-like paintings of a Russian friend who died of cancer (Heavy Water, 1996). She has been praised for her brushwork, the placement of figures in space, and her sensuality of colour.
The Canadian War Bride series began in 2001 with a portrait (now displayed in the Canadian War Museum) of her mother for her 80th birthday. This blossomed into a major travelling exhibition, One-Way Passage (2005 onwards), still shown nationally and internationally. Bev formed a personal connection with many other former war brides, and produced 48 paintings, representing a fraction of the approximately 48,000 women who came from Europe on ‘bride ships’, arriving to meet barely-known husbands in an unknown land. The women are depicted in oil on long, narrow planks of plywood, standing shoulder to shoulder, based on photos taken on their wedding day. Small details suggest their individual personalities, reinforced by the irregularities of the wood grain. The exhibit also includes photos and projections, period artifacts, and vials of salt water, representing the tears shed – over homesickness and isolation. This marriage of personal narrative and social history was so popular that Tosh set up a website, www.warbrides.com.
Bev has had numerous solo exhibitions at various Alberta galleries, and has participated in group shows nationally, and in the US, Japan, India, Russia and the Czech Republic. She is a member of the Alberta Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts. She is the recipient of the Alumni Legacy Award and the Distinguished Alumni Award of Excellence (both from ACAD), the Alberta Centennial Medal, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, and the Woman of Vision Award (from Global TV and the YWCA).
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