Paperback Books by William Kurelek

Edited by Avrom Isaacs Born on a farm in Alberta in the 1920s, William Kurelek spent his childhood and youth on the Canadian Prairies, a land that he came to love in spite of the difficulties wrought by farm life. Later, Kurelek traveled from coast to coast and painted various parts of Canada with a distinct affection for the land and its people. This delightfully illustrated volume features images from a broad spectrum of the entire country. Kurelek`s endearing paintings depict charming, poignant and often humourous scenes from the everyday lives of Canadians--from lumberjacks enjoying a hearty breakfast in Northern Ontario to families celebrating the Sabbath in Montreal. His paintings also capture the landscapes of a country made up of many different parts--from the rugged shores of Newfoundland to the Banff-Jasper Highway that runs through the Rocky Mountains. Kurelek Country is a magnificent, personalized view of our nation. The artist`s father immigrated to Canada from the Ukraine, and the Ukrainian cultural heritage figures prominently in Kurelek`s work. So too do other diverse cultures, including the Polish and Irish in Canada. Kurelek is famous for his unique depictions of the many ethnic groups who settled this country. Kurelek`s own passionate writings accompany the paintings, which demonstrate that his art has always contained a deep, spiritual message. Culled from his autobiography and personal correspondence, Kurelek`s words add a compelling element to this collection. Kurelek Country also features a foreword by the respected art dealer Avrom Isaacs, who was instrumental in building the career of William Kurelek. Before emerging as one of Canada`s best-known artists, Kurelek worked as a framer at the Isaacs Gallery in Toronto to support himself and his family. (1999)

Firsthand accounts, illustrated with the author's paintings, of the life, labor, and meager entertainments of the lumberjack in bygone Canada.

Two months before his death from cancer in 1977, William Kurelek returned to his father’s village in the Ukraine. The Soviet authorities had allowed him to spend four hours there in 1970, and the desire to return had become an obsession with him. In his diary of that trip he wrote, “Let the authorities let me come back to spend six weeks painting the real (to me) Ukrainian people…Those peasants that we met in the collective farm’s fields, the vast rolling fields, speak to me as an artist…let me live with these people as an artist…let me live with these people, dress as they dress, eat their food, sleep on the peech.” During his four weeks spent in the little village of Borivtsi, Bukovina, he had managed with incredible energy to complete 100 drawings and six paintings. They are an extraordinary legacy, a record of a search to understand the world out of which his father came and thereby himself, to solve the dilemma of the immigrant’s son, to know whether he belonged more to the Old World or the New. An extraordinary feature of the drawings is how lovingly they record the simple handmade objects of farm life: the dishes, untensils, tools, and farm implements. The drawings and paintings reproduced here are supplemented with letters written to his wife Jean during the 1970 trip and his personal photographs.

Describes the experiences of European settlers making new lives for themselves in North America

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, twelve-year-old William has a series of Christmas dreams in which he glimpses, among other visions, the Holy Family as an Eskimo family.

This book is about a boy who grows up in the prairies, and he explains what a winter is like.

Summer on the prairies during the Depression years was not a vacation from school; it was hard work.

The Canadian artist depicts such disappearing aspects of Eskimo life as the hunt, the Shaman, igloo-building, and soapstone-carving

In this exciting and action-filled DK Reader, witness the climatic Battle of Naboo from Star Wars Episode I while learning about the characters and their weapons and vehicles. Queen Amidala and her people must join forces with the Gungans in order to reclaim their home planet of Naboo from the invading droid army.