For Immediate Release

Contact: Julie Fowler, Artistic Director/Curator

Toll Free: 1-800-442-ARTS (2787)

Tel: 250-994-3466   Fax: 250-994-3433

Email: media@imarts.com

WELLS, BC, July 3, 2008…..The Island Mountain Arts Public Gallery in Wells, BC is pleased to announce the Opening of Cariboo Cowboy, paintings by prolific Cariboo artist, Sonia Cornwall (1919 – 2006) on Friday, July 18 at 7:00pm. The exhibition, featuring works that illustrate Cornwall’s experience growing up on a ranch at 150 Mile House, runs until August 11.

Cornwall was born in Kamloops in 1919, and soon moved to the Onward Ranch, just south of Williams Lake with her mother and father, Vivien (1893 – 1990) and Charles Cowan (1863 – 1939). From one of the earliest ranching families in the Cariboo, Sonia Cornwall learned from a young age about life on the ranch and when her father died in 1939, she took up many of the duties associated with running it. Cornwall continued to ranch, alongside her husband Hugh Cornwall, for most of the rest of her life, living on the Jones Lake Ranch, once part of the Onward, until she died in 2006. In recognition for her and Hugh’s contributions to ranching in British Columbia, they were both inducted into the BC Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2005.

Alongside her deep connection with ranching, Cornwall grew up around an extremely vibrant arts community, generated to a large degree by her mother Vivien Cowan who was also a painter and teacher of great note. Vivien Cowan began to seriously study art in the 1940s where she met the likes of Zelko Kujundzic, founder of the Kootenay School of the Arts and A.Y. Jackson, founding member of the Group of Seven and teacher at the Banff School, both of whom ended up spending much time at the Onward Ranch. Word spread in the Canadian artists community and over the years endless artists, including Lilias Torrance Newton, Joseph Plaskett, Takao Tanabe, Molly Bobak, Herbert Siebner and Jack Hardman, gravitated towards the Onward to paint, weave, do pottery, share and teach. The Cariboo Art Society, one of the first Art Society’s to be created outside of Vancouver was co-founded by Vivien Cowan and A.Y. Jackson in 1946.

Carrying on much in her mother’s footsteps, Cornwall welcomed to her ranch many a traveller, from artists to cowboys and everyone in between. As she got older and turned her ranch over to her daughter Mabel and her husband, Sonia’s focus turned more and more towards her art practice and she would often have people over to discuss art and look through her own impressive collection of art books and prominent Canadian artworks. Self taught, yet mentored by her mother and the many artists that she knew, Cornwall was extremely dedicated to her painting, in fact just before she passed away she was in Mexico further exploring her watercolour technique.

Cariboo Cowboy features over thirty paintings that reveal Cornwall’s connection to the rural landscape in which she lived: rolling grasslands, ever-changing skies, grazing cattle, stampedes and cowboys. The exhibition is curated by Julie Fowler, Artistic Director/Curator of Island Mountain Arts, with the help of Sonia Cornwall’s two daughters Mary and Mabel Cornwall.

For more information about Cariboo Cowboy, the Public Gallery, Island Mountain Arts School of the Arts or the ArtsWells Festival visit www.imarts.com or call 1-800-442-2787.

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