Provenance:

Private Collection, Toronto

Note:

Wanda Koop is well known for her artistic diversity, excelling in performance art, video and large-scale installations and of course, painting. Her work often addresses the challenging relationship between humanity and nature; Koop is interested in the ways that technology and modernization affect the landscape. A Canal is a depiction of a man-made waterway system that meets a sunset awash in muted tones and blends seamlessly with the land at its borders. The resulting impression is that the canal is a part of the actual landscape and not a construction that has permanently marred it. The angular lines and the architectural shapes subtly suggest both a figurative and literal blurring of the lines between the landscape and its ultimate urbanization.

A native of Vancouver, Koop has shown her work in over 50 solo exhibitions over the past three decades in Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Brazil, Japan, the United States, Italy, India and China. Her work is featured in the collections of the Reykjavik Art Museum (Iceland); Musée d’Art contemporain (Montréal); and the Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa), amongst others. In 1998, Koop founded Winnipeg's Art City Project, an organization that provides inner-city youth with the opportunity to work with contemporary visual artists. She is the recipient of a myriad of awards both nationally and internationally including honorary degrees from the University of Winnipeg (Honorary Doctor of Letters, 2002) and Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver (2007). In 2002, she was awarded the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal and in 2006, Koop was appointed a member of the Order of Canada. She currently lives and works in Winnipeg.