The Chandelier and Porcelain with Artist

Joseph Plaskett (1918 – 2014)
Joseph (“Joe”) Plaskett was a modernist painter originally from British Columbia. Throughout the 1940’s he studied art in Paris, New York, London, San Francisco and Banff. At the Vancouver School of Art, he met fellow artists Lawren Harris, Jock Macdonald, Jack Shadbolt and B.C. Binning. At the Banff Summer School, he studied with A.Y. Jackson. Recipient of an Emily Carr Scholarship, Plaskett went to San Francisco and then New York to further his studies of modernist abstraction. Continuing on to Paris, he studied with Fernand Léger, a key figure in the history of modernist art.

Throughout his career Plaskett continued to explore an impressionist visual language. The subjects of his paintings were often personal. In the style of Monet, he returned again and again to his own garden, painting still lifes of flowers or domestic interiors. Writing about his work, Plaskett declared, “The word I choose to describe the quality of a still life is intimacy. I am closer and closer to the small world surrounding me and its surroundings. I make constant discoveries.”

In 2004, Joseph Plaskett founded the Joe Plaskett annual award for emerging Canadian painters, to enable them to travel to Europe to grow and study. The award was created in recognition of the important assistance Plaskett received from Emily Carr in the form of a scholarship early in his career. Plaskett received the Order of Canada in 2001. His work is represented in major public, private and corporate collections, including the National Gallery of Canada and the Vancouver Art Gallery.