Untitled; Five Figures, Canadian. Oil and Acrylic on Board, 122 x 304.5 cm, 1984. Michael C. Williams Collection, University of Victoria, British Columbia.
Angela Grossman interview with Leah Taylor, Research Assistant with the Williams Oral Art History Project on March 11, 2011 at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Interview transcribed by Amy Cheli.
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AG: “So sometimes you don’t have, you don’t know what’s going to happen and I think that’s what’s exciting. If you don’t know what you are going to do, you are not trying to control it, you also not trying to tweak it, if you know what I mean, you’re not trying to be gimmicky, you are just open.”
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AG: “I remember him being there because he wanted to purchase this piece and it was a shock to me. It was the first time anybody has actually asked to buy anything of mine…”
LT: “and this is Michael Williams?”
AG: “And this is Michael Williams, yea. I mean you don’t really think about selling the work at the time with your work developing like that you don’t think, Oh, I can sell it. It doesn’t come up in your imagination as some kind of an income source, It’s just that you’re trying to find an income source in order to make works.”
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AG: “He came and he was nothing like you might expect or I would expect now. He was in a very conservative looking suit and he seemed to be a very conservative man. He said he would like to come back the next day and take me up Granville Street which was where all the galleries were, South Granville, and take me to see a few things and I said OK. Off we went the next day and he took me to the Baux-Xi and it was very exciting, I think it was the Baux-Xi, maybe it was Ethan’s, but I think it was the Baux-Xi. We went to a couple of them. It was nice that they all knew him so it was like being with somebody who unlocked doors. Everybody would flood in and say hi and he took me in the back to see a few pieces. Which was great, some Shadbolts and that sort of thing and uh, I’ll never really forget it because I really didn’t know that much about the history of BC painters and just the whole experience opened my eyes a bit.”
LT: “It’s really interesting that he just decided to take you around and show you this. He obviously saw something in you, and I think that something we are trying to get to the core of with Michael Williams is that did he see something in young artists or was he just coming across things he liked and was buying them because he could?”
AG: “No. No. From my point of view, from my experience, I would say he was very interested in passing along knowledge. He was very interested in nurturing the idea that there was a movement that I was part of because I really never considered I was. I thought I was an anomaly that I just happened to be here, that I was not part of any fabric. Even when I saw the pieces and I thought, these things have nothing to do with what I’m interested in and they’re nothing like me…now I wonder, now that I look back and see Shadbolts, and I’m a friend of Gordon Smith’s and I think well hold on, what we do is all connected. It is connected. That fact that I’m here connects me to it. The fact that I was there connects me to them.”
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