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| Smilin Buddha Cabaret | 22 x 38 | Oil on canvas | 2016 |
by Janet Smith on
June 15th, 2016 at
11:42 AM
It says something about artist Will Rafuse’s nostalgia for Vancouver
that, even though he has moved to the far side of the country, he is
still obsessively painting the disappearing streetscapes of his former
West Coast home.
There is just something about the tug of this place, and the
fact that the city is changing so rapidly, that has kept him painting
its old corner stores and vibrant neon signs during his past decade in
Montreal, and now in his new home of Saint John.
The Only Seafood,
Vernon Drive Grocery, Golden City Cafe, and Boots by Dayton: these are
just some of the vintage landmarks that populate his works, some of
which will be on view at the Kimoto Gallery as part of this year’s South
Granville ArtWalk, on Saturday (June 18).
Then
again, it may be his very distance from here that feeds his nostalgia.
“When you leave something, you think about it in a different light than
you would if you saw it every single day,” says the artist from New
Brunswick, reflecting on the B.C. city where his art career flourished
for two decades, and still grows.
“I do my take on something that
has disappeared or that I think may be torn down, because I love that
city and I’m so surprised how much it’s transformed over the past 10 or
20 years. Now it’s changing every day. And now that I’ve been coming
back every year for a show, I really notice it.”
He’s in the midst
of finishing a work that honours one of Vancouver’s best-loved neon
pieces: the 1950s Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret sign as it once hung in its
East Hastings streetscape, in oils across a 22-by-38-inch canvas.
Like
so many of his paintings of neon, it’s captured in daylight, to show
the tubing and layered colours, with the sun reflecting off the surfaces
and wires criss-crossing it as they might have back in the day.
“Neon
is kind of alive in itself. You can hear the hum of the gas,” he says.
“People gravitate toward it because they can relate it to something in
their own life. It brings back a memory for them. People will say, ‘I
ate at that restaurant’ or ‘I drove by that grocery.’ ”
He adds
that the glowing, jiggling-bellied beacon of the long-closed live-music
haunt, where everyone from Jimi Hendrix to D.O.A. played, is a classic.
“Besides
the Only and the Ovaltine, I think it’s right up there,” he says. “So
many people have a lot of nostalgia for that place, and that area [100
block East Hastings] has fallen pretty much as far as it can,
unfortunately. That sign holds dear to so many people.”
So just
how does Rafuse remember these sites in such detail when he’s putting
brush to canvas on the other side of the country? He works from archival
photos as well as his own shots. “I have a huge library of imagery I’ve
taken on trips out there,” he says.
And it’s his own pictures of
signs and streetscapes that really drive home the pace of change in this
ridiculously booming West Coast town.
“Even the ones I’ve taken
five years ago, it’s changed,” says Rafuse, whose work joins a summer
group show of other Kimoto artists, like David Wilson, Jim Park, and
Kimberley French, who celebrate, question, and explore this place’s
streets and nearby landscapes.
“The old is disappearing very quickly.”
Courtesy of: © Copyright (c) The Georgia Straight
