Book Launch and Reading by Mona Fertig for The Life & Art of George Fertig

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Friday, July 9th, 2010
7:30 PM to 9:00 PM

The Life And Art of George Fertig
by Mona Fertig
Introduction by Peter Such
#3 in the Unheralded Artists of B.C. series


Your father was a mystic really. He had a clairvoyance
of a very unusual and remarkable kind. He didn�t sell it. He
didn�t advertise it. But he painted it. �Leonard Woods, Artist, Teacher, Writer



George Fertig was a Jungian, a symbolist, a socialist, and an outsider. But above all, he was an artist, struggling to survive in mid century Vancouver, British Columbia. Part biography and part memoir, this book, the 3rd in the Unheralded Artists of BC series, is based on fourteen years of research, interviews, letters and over 150 rare
photographs. Born in Alberta in 1915, George Fertig�s creative passion began at age 20 with photography during the Depression and World War II. He was a member of the infamous Trail Mine Mill Union in the 1930s, and travelled to Mexico in the 1940s. He moved to Vancouver in 1941, where he met and married Evelyn Luxa. They
raised two daughters, while George attempted to find a foothold in the art scene of the 1950s and �60s. Known as the �Moon Man,� George Fertig�s unique oil paintings range from early landscapes to large and powerful archetypal images and small numinous meditations on eternity. His paintings, never synonymous with art trends,
were ignored by most galleries and today are coveted in private collections. He died in 1983.

Mona Fertig, George Fertig�s eldest daughter, is a poet, publisher, and book artist. Her many books and chapbooks include: Releasing the Spirit, Sex Death & Travel, This is Paradise, and Rocksalt (co-editor). She was the founder and Director of
Canada�s first literary centre, the Literary Storefront, in Vancouver�s Gastown, which operated from 1978�1982. A founding member of the Federation of BC Writers, the BC Book Prizes and the Feminist Caucus of the League of Canadian Poets, Fertig has been a bookseller, literary events and political organizer, and host of a poetry show on Vancouver Co-op Radio. She is the co-owner/operator, with her husband, Peter Haase, of Mother Tongue Publishing on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.

Peter Such, is well-known as a TV screen-writer and novelist. He was the founder and original editor of Impulse magazine and has written reviews for Canadian Forum, Canadian Art, Artword, Books in Canada and other publications. He introduced the first courses in Canadian art at Atkinson College and York University
and has lectured on contemporary Canadian art at numerous Canadian universities and abroad at Helsinki,Tartu and La Laguna universities. He is president of the Victoria College of Art in Victoria, B.C., and is married to Joyce Kline, an artist and art writer.

8 x 9.5 | 192 pages | CDN $36.95
Trade paperback with French flaps
150 colour and b&w plates

A Retrospective of George Fertig's work is on at the Burnaby Art Gallery June 1-July 11th 2010

Other books in the series include;

#1 - The Life & Art of David Marshall by Monika Ullmann, Introduction by Brooks Joyner

#2- The Life & Art of Frank Molnar, Jack Hardman & LeRoy Jensen
by Eve Lazarus, Claudia Cornwall & Wendy Newbold Patterson
Introduction by Max Wyman