Jack Akroyd may not be a household name, but Vancouver author Peter Busby, who wrote The Life and Art of Jack Akroyd, wants to change that.
On Nov. 5 as part of the Thursday Artist Talk series at the Surrey Art Gallery, join Busby for an illustrated talk on Akroyd’s dramatic journey and how he filtered his experiences into art.
Akroyd arrived in B.C. from his native England in 1953 and painted landscapes as well as humorous depictions of daily life. He was a member of a group of artists in Vancouver in the early 1960s that included sculptors Paul Huba, Elek Imredy and David Marshall, photographer Jack Dale, and painters George Fertig and Frank Molnar. He was given a solo exhibition at Vancouver Art Gallery in 1975 and several exhibitions at Burnaby Art Gallery – most recently, a major retrospective in July 2015.
Akroyd died at 75 in 1996, relatively unknown except for those enthusiasts as far away as Japan who collected over 500 of his pieces.
Like Akroyd, Busby was born in West Yorkshire, lived for many years in the south of England and settled in Vancouver. He studied English at Sheffield and Leeds Universities before moving to London, where he taught English for ten years before going freelance, co-writing two thrillers and the TV serial Thin Air. Between jobs as an editor, story editor, and ghost writer, he wrote the children’s book First to Fly, which won the 2003 James Madison Award for American non-fiction, an unusual feat for a Canadian author.
There will be time for questions and conversation during and following the talk, which starts at 7:30 p.m. and concludes by 9 p.m.
The event is presented by the Surrey Art Gallery Association in partnership with the Surrey Art Gallery, and with support from the Arts Council of Surrey.