Mary Filer
Mary Filer thrived in Montreal, New York, London, Victoria, and Vancouver during the early to mid decades of the 20th century. As a teenager and beyond, Filer excelled in her studies. At Balfour Technical School in Regina her mentor, W. Garnet Hazard, considered her “a natural born artist.”
She led a busy life sketching, creating art, first as a painter, as well as teaching, including teaching art to children, for many years. She had more than 160 exhibitions during her lifetime. Filer’s work is in private collections around the world and public collections in Canada including at Simon Fraser University and Vancouver General Hospital. She was a generous artist who made donations of her art and helped to fund students to study abroad.
An incredibly talented, intelligent, and active woman, Mary Filer studied nursing at Regina General Hospital and after graduation in 1944 she moved to Montreal to study at McGill University's Neurological Institute for the next two years. While in Montreal, Filer also studied with Arthur Lismer at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' School of Art and Design, followed by two years with John Lyman at McGill University, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree by 1950. Not to be one to settle for that amount of education, Filer taught at McGill until 1952, and subsequently went to Pennsylvania State University where she earned a Master of Education degree, studying with Viktor Lowenfeld and Sybil Emerson. She then taught at Pennsylvania and New York, then moved to England in 1956.
Mary Filer put Greek mythology to copper, creating etchings of nymphs and satyrs during 1952 and 1953. In England she turned her skills again to painting. “Winter Sea, Sandgate, Kent”, a watercolour and wax relief mixed media piece of the misty, grey winter of the coast of England. This piece is available for bidding in our May auction, closing Sunday May 1 at 4pm PDT.
The Unheralded Artists of BC is a series of books illustrating and illuminating the lives and art of previously undocumented important artists of the 1900s–1960s in British Columbia. The ninth book in the series highlights Mary Filer. The Life and Art of Mary Filer by Christina Johnson-Dean, Mother Tongue Publishing 2016
