Takao Tanabe began working with abstraction during his studies at the Winnipeg School of Art in the late 1940’s, but he didn’t explore Japanese sumi-e ink painting techniques until 1959 when a Canada Council grant afforded him the opportunity to travel and study in Japan for two years. While rain-saturated oceanic weather patterns were deeply familiar to Tanabe, who grew up on the West Coast of British Columbia, Island Storm was painted in 1960 while the artist was living in Japan.

When Tanabe returned to Canada, lessons from the practice of sumi-e painting continued to resonate. As art historian Ian Thom remarks in the recently published Takao Tanabe, Life and Work, “Although the sumi-e paintings Tanabe produced were, for the most part, confined to his time in Japan, the decisive approach required by the medium afforded him a creative assuredness that would be significant in the execution of his later prairie landscapes.” The subject of coastal weather patterns, however, did not come back in force until Tanabe and his wife Anona Thorne moved to Vancouver Island in 1980, but by this time Tanabe was working in his later, representational style. 

Notes from the Collection is an ongoing project that activates and shares the Gallery’s permanent collection by pairing a single artwork with each exhibition as a point of reflection. Island Storm was chosen to accompany the exhibition Sun Over Swamp.

Island Storm

Sumi-e ink on paper

Collection of Nanaimo Art Gallery,

Gift of Takao Tanabe and Anona Thorne
Photography: Sean Fenzl