🎨 A Lifetime in Art: What Two Vancouver Exhibitions Taught Me About Devotion, Craft, and the Soul of Collecting
Reflections on "Postcards from the Heart" and "Riopelle: Crossroads in Time"
There are two collections currently on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery that moved me deeply. One is Postcards from the Heart, a selection from the private collection of Brigitte and Henning Freybe—longtime patrons of the arts and devoted supporters of the VAG. The other is Riopelle: Crossroads in Time, a sweeping retrospective covering 50 years of Jean Paul Riopelle’s creative production. What struck me most in both exhibitions was the shared thread of lifelong commitment—to making, preserving, and responding to art.
The title Postcards from the Heart refers to the many letters and postcards sent to the Freybes by artists whose work they collected and often hosted in their home over five decades. There’s something deeply affirming in that: ART MATTERS. From the ideas that won’t let you sleep at night to the endless iterations that slowly shape a new truth—art is made, and it’s also witnessed.
It reminded me of the importance of the beholder. A believing mirror. Someone who sees, cherishes, and finds a place for the work among their own daily life. I kept thinking of the invisible magnetism that must have drawn each piece into their home. Did a particular painting sit above the dining table? Was it a comfort in a moment of loss, a celebration of a turning point? Walking from room to room, I couldn’t help but wonder if the collection reflects the emotional seasons of the Freybes’ lives.
Some of the works incorporated unexpected materials and mechanisms—like Milkstone, covered in a thin layer of milk, or Sea-Cow Treaty (Spread) (1977), with its vibrant buckets of coloured water. How were these displayed at home? What conversations unfolded around them? How did living alongside such contemporary, evocative work shape daily experience?
This is the largest private collection I’ve ever visited, and it felt so alive with love. Each piece felt like a gesture of care—selected not just for aesthetics, but for connection: to an artist, a memory, a story, a moment of reflection.
In an interview with curator Eva Respini recorded in the Freybes’ art-filled West Vancouver home, Brigitte—who studied art in Basel and Munich—shared that she always “wanted to be a set designer.” I can’t help but feel that the collection she’s nurtured creates a kind of stage for the imagination. There’s a sense of theatre, of intentional composition, a space where stories can take flight.
Up on the third floor, Riopelle: Crossroads in Time offers another kind of journey—through five decades of tireless, evolving dedication to a singular craft. I was especially moved by his works from the 1950s, where he layered oil paint into dazzling, mosaic-like textures I had never seen before. The surfaces seemed to pulse with life.
Toward the later years, his work leaned further into abstraction, incorporating loose lines and even spray paint—a gesture perhaps inspired by his presence in the New York art scene, and his early solo show at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1954. That gallery, known for representing French avant-garde artists, helped introduce Riopelle’s unique voice to North American audiences.
It made me think of other large-scale retrospectives I’ve seen—how both Matisse and Monet moved into abstraction in their later years. After a lifetime of painting, the soul of their work was still so clearly present, distilled into reduced linework and form.
There’s a philosophy of painting in China called shan shui, which literally means “mountain-water.” In this tradition, painters don’t aim to replicate what they see in nature, but rather to express what they think and feel about it. One master once said:
“Shan shui painting refutes color, light, shadow, and personal brushwork. It is not a window for the viewer’s eye—it is an object for the viewer’s mind. A vehicle of philosophy.”
That idea has stayed with me.
Between these two floors of the gallery, I felt a quiet truth settle in: no matter what your passion is—collecting, curating, painting, sculpting—when we give ourselves to our craft wholeheartedly, over a lifetime, something deeper begins to reveal itself. Maybe it’s not just art we’re making, but our own philosophy, made visible.
