Anna Banana
born 1940 in Roberts Creek BC - resides in Roberts Creek BC
Anna Banana is a Canadian mail-artist, performer, writer, publisher and artistamp artist. She received a teaching certificate from UBC, majoring in art and design in the late 60's, teaching in public schools in Victoria BC and then in an experimental school which she later co-directed. She initially gained a high profile in Canada as a vocal exponent of unconventional lifestyles. In writings such as The Transformation of Anna Long of Gordon’s Beach, BC, a profile that appeared in the Canadian magazine Macleans, Banana adopted a first-person narrative about dropping out of the "straight life." She has been an innovator, entrepreneur and critic in the Mail-Art network, her work taking shape in the early 70's, largely molded by the ideas and values that permeated the alternative movements then. She was one of a number of artists to pioneer an important branch of Mail-Art when she created and distributed editions of original postage size artworks called artistamps. While many of her projects, including the Encyclopedia Bananica, Banana Rag, and VILE magazine, serve as forums for recognizing and cultivating alternative lifestyles, she has based her activity on the development and evolution of the mail art network. With the 1988 purchase of a Rosback rotary pin-hole perforator, Banana began publishing International Art Post. At the beginning of the new century her Mail-Art activities lessened as she moved in other directions. She became involved in the making and trading of Artist Trading Cards (ATC's ), trading both by mail and with various artists in her hometown of Roberts Creek where she introduced the activity.
http://www.spareroom.org/mailart/mis_3.html
http://www.oberlin.edu/library/art/mailart/bios/banana.html
http://popstart.ca/en/members/anna-banana
http://www.briarpress.org/1202
http://www.sztuka-fabryka.be/encyclopaedia/items/banana.htm
http://text.vcu.edu:8080/tt/www.library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccoll/davidetbanana.html
http://damesportraitgallery.blogspot.com/2008/03/anna-banana-roberts-creek-bc-canada.html

Kerensa Haynes
born in London, England - resides in Vancouver BC
Kerensa Haynes lived in the Grand Cayman Islands and Puerto Rico before her family emigrated to Canada. She holds a degree in Visual Arts from The University of Western Ontario and an Advanced Diploma in Game Art & Design from The Art Institute of Burnaby-Vancouver, 2006. Kerensa has been painting for over 20 years; her current work explores the relationship between nature and man. Kerensa’s paintings question our idea of perception. She is deeply interested in the relationship between the abstract and the representational. Paint is layered, thrown, dripped, knocked and rubbed in to and out of the canvas, a physical act of expressionism and action. Haynes allows things to “talk to her first,” drawing, photographing, and painting the image until there is some crossover between the emotional and intellectual. Kerensa lives and works in her studio in downtown Vancouver, exhibiting across Canada.
http://www.kerensagallery.net
http://www.theartistprojecttoronto.com/artists_new.php?id=63
http://www.adelecampbell.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=1318
http://www.awoodsidedesign.com/
http://www.geocities.com/monnysenvisiongallery/

Kindrie Grove
born in Alberta - resides in Okanagan Valley BC
Kindrie Grove is a nationally-known artist, author and illustrator, whose connection to animals - both wild and domestic - has always been a close one. Her first drawings as a girl always expressed her reverence for animals as powerful and magnificent creatures. She studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, and has had a successful career as a full-time professional artist. To date, she has studied wildlife in their natural habitats across much of Canada, the United States and southern Africa. Kindrie is the author/illustrator of A Field Guide to Horses (Lone Pine Publishing), and is best known for her extraordinarily large oil paintings which explore the magnificent beauty of life-sized zebras, lions, cheetahs, bears, elephants and many other wild creatures, often emphasizing their complex connections to humans. She is also a sculptor, casting her works in bronze. Her art is currently featured in galleries across Canada and Europe, and is enjoyed in numerous international private and corporate collections. Kindrie often makes a practice of donating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of her works to conservation organizations and environmental charities, and through her work hopes to inspire others to protect the Earth's incredible diversity of life. Kindrie is a Signature Member of Artists for Conservation.
http://www.kindriegrove.com/
http://www.adelecampbell.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=1322
http://www.natureartists.com/artists/artist_biography.asp?ArtistID=960
http://www.tumbleweedgallery.ca/artists/kindry_grove.htm
http://www.collectorsgalleryofart.com/dynamic/artist.asp?artistid=231&categoryid=artists+represented

Yvonne Reddick
resides in Kelowna BC
Yvonne Reddick was initially inspired to paint by a trip to Italy where she was struck by the beauty of the old world paintings and sculptures, particularly those from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Her own work emulates the methods of European Old Master painters, such as Caravaggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. Like them, she uses the dramatic play of light and shadow to create striking yet intimate compositions. For several years she has been working as studio assistant for renowned Canadian painter David Langevin which has allowed her to study her trade in the Old Master/apprentice style system. She only began exhibiting her own work in 2007 with the show First Fruits at 'The Cube'. This exhibition of fruit and vegetable still-life oil paintings was her first public exhibition. Since she devoted herself full time to her art she cannot keep up with the demand for her work. A studious and meticulous painter, she patiently builds her oil paintings; each work is made up of many layers of paint. Consequently, they seem to glow with light and achieve a depth and intensity of saturated colour.
http://www.adelecampbell.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=1321
http://www.yvonnereddick.com/about.php
http://hamptongalleries.com/reddick_yvonne.htm Yvonne Reddick
http://www.kag.bc.ca/2007exhibitions.htm
http://www.davidlangevin.com/links.php

Sylvia Tait
resides in West Vancouver BC
Sylvia Tait is a world renowned West Vancouver artist who studied for at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts under Arthur Lismer, Jacques de Tonnancoeur, and Eldon Grier. She received three scholarships, Top Student Award and Honour Diploma. Since the 1950's she has exhibited across Canada, in Mexico and Ecuador in solo and group shows. Sylvia Tait has been represented by the Bau-Xi Gallery since 1977. She and her late husband, the poet Eldon Grier (Grier studied fresco painting with the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera), collaborated on "The Minotaur" , an undated lithograph in which Tait has illustrated Grier's poem of the same name. As in her partitioned abstractions, Tait's touch here is nimble, and she communicates wonder and sensuousness. Her paintings are in corporate and public collections in Europe, USA, Canada, South America and Hong Kong. Selected collections include Musee de l'Art Contemporaine, Quebec; Vancouver Art Gallery BC; Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba; the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Canada Council Art Bank. She recently won the competition for the new Aquatic Center in West Vancouver BC (2004). "AquaScapes" is an art piece of enormous proportions. These movable sunshades were manufactured by BGM & Interactive Solutions New Media (Toronto) as part of the Aquatic Centre development. AquaScapes is an award-winning piece, combining digital representations of the waters of West Vancouver with bright blocks of colour to create a kaleidoscope effect as the panels are adjusted according to light and weather conditions .
http://www.bau-xi.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=28
http://www.bclocalnews.com/entertainment/42535317.html
http://www.straight.com/article/generations-has-a-few-gaps
http://westvancouver.ca/Level3.aspx?id=152