Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/398704
F a l l 2 0 1 4 I V a n c o u v e r F o u n d a t i o n l p a g e 2 3 Takao Tanabe may be one of Canada's most renowned art- ists, his 60-year career chronicled in detail by art institutions, journals and the media alike. But there's a lesser-known side to his success story, one that the Vancouver Island painter recalls with utmost clarity: the long struggle not just for his art, but for the financial means to make his art possible. "Always, money, money, money was short. How to make another few dollars to pay my rent or buy some food or something," Tanabe says of his early years as an artist. At 88, Tanabe is no longer worried about money. His landscape paintings of the West Coast and Prairies, for which he is known, belong to some of the country's top private collections as well as the Vancouver Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada. Bestowed with honorary degrees and prestigious awards, including the Order of Canada, the Order of B.C. and the Governor General's Award, there is little doubt of his stature in Canadian art. But his early struggles to make ends meet has never left him, and that's why, for years, Tanabe has quietly made supporting young artists a priority. "I know when I was in their shoes, I was grateful to get any rec- ognition or dollars," says Tanabe. Since 1997, about 70 students have received art scholarships through an endowment fund Tanabe established with Vancouver Foundation. e donor-advised fund provides seven annual art scholarships through post-secondary schools across the country as well as annual grants to the Vancouver Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Art and other cultural groups. It's not surprising Tanabe has chosen to focus his grant money on the arts, though becoming an artist to begin with was something of a near accident. Born in 1926 to a commercial fisherman in the village of Seal Cove, near Prince Rupert, Tanabe had little exposure to art in his youth. High school was cut short, too, when the Second World War forced a 16-year-old Tanabe and his family into an internment camp in B.C.'s Interior. By the time the war ended, Tanabe had moved to Manitoba with only a Grade 10 education. His prospects for employment were grim: mostly manual labour. He was prepared to do anything to escape this predetermined fate. "If you had to earn enough money to pay your rent and the only job you could get was preparing work on the road, or working in a wholesale company packing boots in the back – sorting this out, packing this, unpacking that, and saying, 'Is this going to be my life?' How many people would say, 'yeah'? ey'd all want to go and do something else to get out of it. I thought, I don't want to be this kind of labourer all my life," he recalls. Without a high school diploma, it was impossible for Tanabe to go to university as he had once dreamed. So he turned his attention to becoming a sign painter and, as a special exemption, the Winnipeg School of Art admitted him without the necessary high school credentials. He scraped by, paying tuition by working at a local foundry and, later, as the school janitor. His education, however, cemented his calling in art. Tanabe's restless quest to understand art and develop his place in it took him to New York, Vancouver and, for two years in his 20s, between 1953 and 1955, throughout Europe on a $1,200 Emily Carr grant. A Canada Council Grant also took him to Japan to study sumi painting for a year in 1959.