Guest Blog: Connecting the city’s artistic past to its creative future
Victoria Visual Arts Legacy Society celebrates 15 years
By John Threlfall, Victoria Visual Arts Legacy Society board member
Since 2010, iconic Canadian visual artist Pat Martin Bates has watched her Victoria Visual Arts Legacy Society (VVALS) grow from a fledgling organization to a robust non-profit that has now handed out over $72,000 in annual bursaries to post-secondary student artists. In fact, VVALS just celebrated our 15th anniversary by increasing both the number and amount of our annual awards: at this year’s Inspiration! event on April 9, we presented $1,200 to 10 students, up from the $1,000 we’ve traditionally given to eight recipients.
VVALS continues our mandate of connecting Victoria’s artistic past to its creative future by pairing students with awards in the name of “Legacy Artists” who have helped shape Victoria’s reputation as a cultural capital: to date, we have designated 26 Legacy Artists ranging from the likes of Carole Sabiston, Mary Kerr and Arthur Vickers to the late Andy Wooldridge, Michael Morris and Jo Manning, to name but a few.
2025 Legacy Artist Miles Lowry — who has been making and exhibiting his sensual, life-size human sculptures and his spiritually evocative paintings since 1981 in Victoria — feels quite at home joining the full list of VVALS Legacy Artists. “I have a kindred feeling with this company, as I know or knew many of them,” he says. “I was the up-and-coming artist when they were established and I admired them all greatly. I feel I am in great company, given their humour, self-discipline and individual ways.”
Supporting the next generation of artists
Yet while many VVALS Legacy Artists enjoy international acclaim, others — like Centennial Square fountain creator Jack Wilkinson and interior designer Shushan Egoyan — are better remembered for their behind-the-scenes influence. The late expressionist painter and Camosun College art instructor James Gordaneer is a good example of this latter group; thanks to the generous support of his family, VVALS is proud to present the James Gordaneer Legacy Artist Award each year to a Camosun student.
“Jim always believed in his students and encouraged them to follow their artistic passions,” says daughter Alisa Gordaneer. “Camosun students work exceptionally hard at their art and deserve recognition for the efforts?they put in. Supporting them is a nice way for his legacy to continue.”
The high cost of art-living
No question, it’s expensive to be a visual art student. Art supplies are about more than just brushes and paints; these days, tablets and software licenses are as necessary as clay or canvases. And that’s not even considering the ever-increasing price (and rapidly decreasing availability) of studio space.
Miles Lowry well knows the challenges and realities of starting — and maintaining — an artistic career in Victoria. “The Legacy Artists are artists who didn’t give up, who took the job as seriously as any other part of their lives,” says Lowry, also the longtime co-director of Suddenly Dance Theatre. “I found my way by working in the various disciplines that artists can contribute to — like media-arts, dance and live theatre — while attending to each emerging series of paintings or sculpture. Eventually, this becomes a lifetime in art.”
Building the future of art together
The Victoria Visual Arts Legacy Society is dedicated to our mandate of supporting post-secondary visual arts students at our partner institutions: Camosun College, Pacific Design Academy, the Vancouver Island School of Art and both the departments of Art Education and Visual Arts at the University of Victoria.
But we can only fulfill that mission with the support of our donors, and by continuing to build our endowment fund at the Victoria Foundation. Together, we can ensure that Victoria’s bright artistic future rests in the creative hands of tomorrow’s artists.
“I believe creating art can be a powerful method for expression and change,” says Camosun student Vinny Fowler, the proud recipient of this year’s James Gordaneer Legacy Artist Award. “I would like to share that with as many people as possible.”
