An exploration of the garden through a lifetime of artwork by noted western Canadian painter David More.

Book launch with artist on Saturday, September 11, 2021, from 2:00-4:00 PM, at the Red Deer Museum + Art Gallery (MAG) – public and media welcome.

As Red Deer’s cultural scene grows and matures, it is important to build a record of those who have made the path, inspired us, and used their creative talent to expand our perception of the world around us.

Greatest Garden: The Paintings of David More is a celebration of Benalto landscape painter David More’s engagement with the garden as a multifaceted subject. Featuring over fifty original artworks, this book encompasses a career spent in conversation with gardens in their many and varied forms. With lively brushwork, a keen sense of colour, and an aptitude for expressive drawing and varied composition, More has found the garden in expected and unexpected places.

David More will be onsite for the book launch at the Red Deer Museum + Art Gallery (MAG) on Saturday, September 11, 2021, from 2-4pm.

Come meet the artist and pick up your signed copy of this beautiful collection of artworks for the member’s price of $30 (September 11 only; regular price is $40). This book is published by University of Calgary Press.

Words from Executive Director, Lorna Johnson:

“The Board and Staff of the MAG are so proud of this publication. It was a delight to work with Dave, Mary-Beth and the University of Calgary Press to realize our vision for a publication that would reflect Dave’s work and celebrate his generous gift of works to the MAG. It is an important milestone in documenting the art history of Central Alberta.”

Words from David More  

“Being the subject of a book is truly a privilege during one’s lifetime. Greatest Garden: The Paintings of David More allows for the vision my wife Yvette and I share to reach a much wider world.  Just as importantly, this book brings the Red Deer Museum + Art Gallery to the international stage, where it deserves to be. Lorna Johnson and her amazing team have raised the profile of the Red Deer MAG to unimagined heights during her tenure. Working with delightful author Mary-Beth Laviolette and the distinguished University of Calgary Press over the last year has given us a most memorable journey.”

David More and his wife Yvette Brideau, donated 200 of his paintings and drawings to the Red Deer Museum + Art Gallery in 2019. In that same year, to recognize Dave’s generous gift, the MAG hosted a retrospective exhibition of his work that was curated and organized by independent curator Mary-Beth Laviolette. As an extension of her research, and in celebration of Dave’s artistic achievements, Mary-Beth also wrote Greatest Garden. Published by the University of Calgary Press, Greatest Garden beautifully examines the multiple subjects that have captured Dave’s attention and imagination over the years, and reflects the evolution of his artistic practice.

About David More

David More is one of western Canada’s exceptional painters. Based in the rural hamlet of Benalto, near Red Deer Alberta, he is part of a generation of landscape artists who emerged in the 1970s to make beauty out of the ordinary and challenge the expected with bold acts of creation.

Throughout his career, More has returned to the garden as a deeply functional yet ritualistic space of human endeavour. The garden is a place of shelter and sanctuary, of colour and fragrance, of order and wilderness. The garden is a private space, carefully tended and planted, observed en plein air or through the living-room window. The garden is a public space, a park where people gather to let their natures blossom. The garden is the world, the nature that sustains and surrounds us, the environment we all live within, and all have a responsibility to cultivate and tend.

About the Author

Mary-Beth Laviolette is an independent curator and writer with a visual art practice spanning forty years. She is the author of An Alberta Art Chronicle and A Delicate Art: Artists, Wildflowers, and Native Plants of the West. She has curated exhibitions for the Art Gallery of Alberta, Calgary’s Glenbow Museum, the Whyte Museum, and more. Mary-Beth is the recipient of many awards, including the Alberta Centennial Medal and Artist in the Spotlight.