BROUWER, Valerie

February 4, 1930 - March 16, 2021

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There are artists, and there are artists who raise families.

Valerie Louise Hermon Brouwer, FCA, CSMA passed away gently on 16 March 2021, with a view of her beloved West Vancouver seascape, children close by and memories intact, after a lifetime of accomplishments. She was, as they say in art circles, dimensional: a key figure in West Coast representational painting in the seventies and eighties, and a warm and engaged mother of four who somehow pulled off the myriad feats of parenthood while producing canvas after canvas of pure, piercing Canadian landscapes.

Valerie knew how to paint the play of light on leaves and water. Her style was called 'photo realist'. She was a child of the Depression who delighted in funny events and funny people. Tall, with a real feel for fashion, Valerie and her husband Jake made a knockout couple at Mulroney-era Lower Mainland parties and dinners (which were legion, as Jake was a well-known Vancouver businessman and Tory fundraiser). She was a meticulous observer of the varieties of nature in British Columbia, from the smallest wave of grass to the sharp bulk of the Rockies. Whether working in oils, watercolour, or unadorned pencil, Valerie always returned to trees and water and sky, all those endlessly refracting blues and greens.

Born on February 4 1930 in Vancouver to a family of Crash-stricken surveyors, Valerie grew up on a struggling apple orchard in Oliver, B.C. After graduation she moved to Vancouver and attended the Vancouver School of Art. Emily Carr and The Group of Seven set the aesthetic markers for her career.

Her most memorable exhibition was Exposition Gallery's 'Landforms' (1980), a sold-out array of her signature wide views of low-flying float planes and glittering Sunshine Coast inlets. Collectors and institutions such as Jimmy Pattison, RCBC, and MacMillan Bloedel acquired her paintings for qualities the Vancouver Sun art critic Andrew Scott called " something fresh and invigorating to ... familiar West Coast views. With ... almost pointillist precision, she manages to convey a heightened sensory quality of landscape". The names of just a few of Valerie's oils tell the story: 'Bute Inlet' 'Desolation Sound' 'The Lions' 'First Light North Coast' 'Trees On The Point' 'Glacier Bay'.

Valerie worked hard for the West Vancouver Sketch Club and Klee Wyck, local organizations dismissed by some at the time as 'female coffee clubs' but now acknowledged as places of support and development for women artists. She was lauded frequently over the years by Sun columnist-about-town Jack Wasserman, notably and rather groovily as "a West Van housewife who decided to do her own thing before it was "in" and began painting". Valerie at daybreak behind the house on Palmerston Avenue - gathering flowers, killing slugs. Valerie and the weird menu years: why the deep fat fryer? About those homemade tacos - is it safe to come out yet? The household smell of linseed oil, or hot wax (from her preoccupation with batik), or freshly sharpened pencils (she was particularly fond of the intricate, large format pencil illustrations of indigenous plants she contributed to the show and catalogue 'Plantae Occidentalis, 200 Years Of Botanical Art in British Columbia').

Valerie as nurturer, dog lover, and recipient of great-legs-lady remarks from back in the day. Twenty-year old Valerie who was enlisted on a blind date by a man whose mouth she was stuffing with cotton (she was briefly a dental nurse, and one day the man in the chair asked if she would like to go out with his Dutch buddy Jake). Valerie who recalled scorpions and starving, itinerant fruit pickers from her Oliver childhood. Valerie who conjured a welcoming home for a terrific husband, four fulfilled, lively children - Joan Adair; Louise Astrid; Jan Gerrit; James Peter Andrew - and hundreds of arresting artworks, creations their owners continue to regard as satisfying or inspiring or profound, and always beautiful. Valerie who could really love and was loved.

Again: there are artists, and there are artists who raise families. How was that even possible?

Valerie Brouwer, nee Hermon, died of natural causes at the Amica Lions Gate facility. Her family wishes to thank care staff for their compassion and professionalism. Valerie's ashes will be scattered at Indian Point, Savary Island in July 2021.