Gathie Falk (1928-2025)
It is with heavy hearts that we share that Gathie Falk (1928-2025) has passed away at 97 years of age. She was one of a kind, a fearless artist, hard worker, gracious host and lover of butter. We will treasure our friendship with her. It is an honour to share with you her boundless talent and unique vision. Rest in peace Gathie.
A beautiful compilation of recent tributes can be read HERE
Gathie Falk was born in 1928 in Alexander, Manitoba. Her parents were German-speaking Mennonites who immigrated to Canada in order to escape persecution in Russia. Shortly after Gathie’s birth, her father died, leaving the family impoverished forcing them to move repeatedly to various Mennonite communities across Canada. For a short time, the family moved to Winnipeg, setting in Vancouver in 1947.
In Vancouver in the 1950s Falk worked as an elementary school teacher and devoted her spare time to her art studies. She enjoyed summer classes at UBC and studied drawing and painting with JAS MacDonald. In 1965 Falk left her position as a teacher and decided to pursue a career as a full-time artist. That same year she had her first solo exhibit and traveled to Europe for the first time.
From 1968-1972 Falk was one of the first performance artists working in Canada and over that period created fifteen unique performances. Repetition of ordinary activities and ideas of domesticity were central to her performances.
In the early 1970s Falk returned to painting and sculpture, exploring motifs of the domestic and every day. Gathie Falk defined her work as a “veneration of the ordinary,” the witty and whimsical treatment of common objects of everyday life. She choose simple, domestic pleasures as her subjects: the beauty of a glistening stack of fruit, shoes lined up in a row, clothing hanging on a close line or lush summer gardens and dazzling night skies.
Falk exhibited extensively throughout her 60-year career including the survey exhibition “Paintings 1978-1984” (1985) which toured to 5 public galleries across Canada and “Gathie Falk” (2000), a major touring retrospective exhibition organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery. The McMichael Canadian Art Collection organized her final touring retrospective “Revelations” (2022-2024), accompanied by a beautiful publication.
Falk’s artworks are in countless public collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montreal, National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery and Winnipeg Art Gallery.
She was awarded the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (1990), named to the Order of Canada (1997), Order of British Columbia (2002) and received the Governor General’s Award in Visual Arts (2003). Most recently in 2013, Falk received the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Visual Arts.
In 2018 Falk published her memoire “Apples, etc.”, co-written with Robin Laurence. “Life & Work”, an online Art Canada Institute book devoted to Falk’s life and art practice was published in 2022, written by Michelle Jacques.
Gathie Falk passed away on December 22, 2025, in Vancouver.