“White is an extreme colour but in the context of Edmonton winters in the 1960s, it was, to Manarey, the most natural pigment. These two aspects: simplicty and the colour white, motivated a series of paintings executed from the mid-1960s to 1972.” (Alberta Mistresses of the Modern 1935-1975, Mary-Beth Laviolette, Art Gallery of Alberta)

One of the seminal, original, daring women artists of Alberta in the middle 20th century, Thelma Manarey was born in Edmonton in 1913, and died in Edmonton in 1984. The cold and the snow influenced her strongly in her later mid-life when she turned, briefly, to large-scale abstract acrylic painting on canvas. It was a brief period, but dramatic, innovative, and ambitious.

It was after this period that she turned from one extreme to another: miniature etchings, a medium that would fill her creative life until her death.

It’s said Thelma wasn’t very good at Backgammon. She spent later years on cruise ships, relaxing and playing the game with her fellow passengers — but always for cash. When she told her nephew-in-law that she was going to teach him the game, he managed to turn the board quickly and won his first $20. She may have been good enough to take a few bucks from seniors on ships, but a university student had the upper hand, once.

From the mid-1960s through 1972, however, Thelma Manarey was immersed in the large-scale, experimental play of negative and positive space, working layers of bright acrylic in soft organic patterns over 4 foot by 5 foot canvas sheets. From there she layered white acrylic over the entire canvas, sometimes seven or eight layers.

Thelma Manarey was deeply connected to the land and climate of Alberta. “Winter, for Manarey, had a simplicity to it: a stripping away of everything superfluous. Its colour — white — was another attractive feature, especially when snow in its most pristine state would superimpose itself over everything.” (Alberta Mistresses of the Modern 1935-1975, Mary-Beth Laviolette, Art Gallery of Alberta.)

From the Edmonton Journal, 10 March 1972 (page 59, Evelyn Blakeman):

“Thelma Manarey: Recent Paintings”
Edmonton Art Gallery through March 1972
Comprising 19 large acrylic paintings, it represents a further development of her exploration of tensions and positive-negative space.
Thelma Manarey’s forms have organic derivation. Vestiges of earlier drawings and paintings of bone formations make their presence felt again in these abstract compositions. A number of the canvases, notably Nos. 12, 15, 16, 17 and 18, feature single irregular amoeba-like forms. Others, such as Nos. 7, 8, 9 and 10, employ numerous small closed shapes. Nestled together like rodents in a burrow, they form complex patterns.
The predominant color in all of the canvases is a shimmering white that is sometimes aggressive and at other times cool and receding, depending upon the color company it keeps.
This white “background” is actually applied last. The artist is as much interested in the negative spaces as in the positive.

Offered for sale is “A-8-71” with the “small closed shapes … “like rodents in a burrow” and “A-12-71” with the fluid “irregular amoeba-like forms”.

They have remained with a family member by marriage who has kept a large collection of Thelma Manarey’s paintings and etchings. His memories of her are very fond and their bond was strong from his birth until her death in 1984.

Contact Leanne for a complete condition report.