Fonds AR479 - Gladys Kathleen Ewan fonds

Gladys Kathleen (née MacKintosh) Ewan was born in Victoria, B.C. in 1911. Her father was a water colourist and she had an early interest in art. She studied at the Victoria School of Art under Ira Uhtoff. She received her B.A. degree from the University of British Columbia and then studied a year at the Victoria Provincial Normal School. While working she still found time to develop her painting and attended the Vancouver School of Art under H. Tauber, an Australian artist and designer, also the University of Washington under Archipenko for painting and sculpture and again the Victoria School of Art, one year, for life drawing, figure and portrait painting, designing, historic costumes, pottery and ceramics, and later abstract design under Margaret Peterson. A painter of landscapes, portraits and figures she was interested in the work of Cezanne, Van Gogh, Braque, Picasso and others. During the Second World War and afterwards, she worked as a commercial artist including two years advertising in layout design and illustration for newspapers; service bulletins and smaller advertising media of car cards and special booklets. She then spent two years in freelance commercial art work of catalogue illustrations for Woodwards Department Store and some work for a Vancouver lithographing company.

Her awards include the Beatrice Stone Medal for best oil, 1944; Honourable Mention for the exhibition "B.C. at Work" in 1945 at the Vancouver Art Gallery; and had a painting accepted for showing at the Canadian Women Artists' Exhibition in New York at the Riverside Museum in 1947. She exhibited in the show "Five Women Painters of Victoria" at the Victoria Art Gallery in 1954. She exhibited regularly at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. She was represented in the Vancouver General Hospital Collection and private collections of the west coast.

Gladys Kathleen Ewan was married her husband, George Lawrence Ewan (?-1972). She was an Associate of the B.C. Society of Artists and lived in Victoria where she was a library assistant at Victoria College and then the University of Victoria until her retirement in 1977.