Deep in the Dark, Damp Woods with Vancouver Island’s George Sawchuk

George Sawchuk (all photos 2001) Fanny Bay, BC; Forest environment. 

By JOHN DRURY April 1, 2025

There was a place I so liked to go - a pilgrimage - mostly gone now for my aesthetic purposes, where far removed from the hustle and bustle of city life, one might lose themselves in the wooded marvel of the Pacific Northwest and the homage to natural wonder that the artist George Sawchuk had composed there. It was here on his property, where George voiced his concern for all things essential…the water, the forest, our air…and in that shared reverential pursuit, echoing the voice of American naturalist Henry David Thoreau. A place of constant and renewed discovery, ever-changing with time and the seasons, each visit to environmentalist artist George Sawchuk’s habitat would disclose something new, a feature previously overlooked - or once hidden; perhaps newly revealed, the result of the daily upkeep of the artist. For decades, after moving to Vancouver Island from North Vancouver, in 1974, George worked his magic in the ocean-backed woods behind his Fanny Bay home.

Here was an art as much (more) a mission, devoid the cumbersome search for sales or pursuit aggrandizement; an expression rooted in concern, as informed by a lifelong perspective, culmination boots on the ground experience. Here was an art celebratory the regenerative power of Mother Nature, if only we would do our part, of conservation, in companionship. Here, George was free to express his socialist observations – his criticism church and state, while bemoaning a lack of stewardship for the environment.

George Sawchuk (all photos 2001) Fanny Bay, BC; Forest environment.

There is the gallery of the mind. And here we hold that most cherished, that which is indelible when so much other, fades away. Here imprinted are the images rooted in true reverence, and in lived experience; the impressions steadfast, influential and forever a nourishment the creative intellect. Here in the head, these impressions of George Sawchuk’s land find remembered books cradled in the living scars of trees, faucets, sinks and plumbing recalling the necessity and power of endangered water. Here, in recollection, they outlive the physical, when the tragedy of time and the elements erase tactility, to find superiority in the ether of memory and recall. Here instead, legend is born.

Vancouver’s influential artist and visionary Jerry Pethick turned me on to George’s unique work, while we were both on campus, at the Pilchuck Glass School in 2001; Jerry an artist-in-residence and I, then teaching, for a third instructional engagement. Jerry and I first met, while also at the school, in 1986; this last visit then, was Jerry’s third residency at Pilchuck. Inviting co-instructor Robbie Miller and myself, my wife and one-year-old daughter, to visit him on his Hornby Island property, for a few days following the session, Jerry suggested we stop along the way to introduce ourselves to George. Jerry too, understood the brilliance of George Sawchuk’s work, if coming from quite different artistic paths; Pethick trained, and George self-taught. What they shared, was a reverence for Marcel Duchamp, and the uncanny ability to create from what is at hand, make-do.

George Sawchuk (all photos 2001) Fanny Bay, BC; Forest environment.

George Sawchuk hoboed as a young man, and worked construction, and the woods and the sea, laboring for the majority of his life, before turning to his art denouncing policies and practices that allow the enrichment of the few, at the expense of the many. Perhaps it is fitting, that the forest has all but erased the hand of Sawchuk there, and his “Wacky Woods” as they had come to be affectionally known. It was in the forest, that George was most comfortable, once proclaiming when interviewed, “I have to get my back up against the woods”. George Sawchuk gifted us the place, a setting adorned in creativity, to do the same. WM