Wanda Koop, Flying to the Moon – Victim (1985), acrylic on plywood, diptych [Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond BC, Nov 20-Jan 10]

Wanda Koop, View From Here – Face [detail] (2009), india ink on paper [Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond BC, Nov 20-Jan 10]

Wanda Koop, Hybrid Human – Untitled (2008), acrylic on canvas [Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond BC, Nov 20-Jan 10]

Wanda Koop is a well-known Canadian landscape painter represented by the Michael Gibson Gallery in London, Ontario. She has recently exhibited in Rotterdam and will be showing at the National Gallery of Canada in 2011.

Koop is known for her loose, large-scale Canadian landscapes. Over the past 25 years, she has also created a dramatic series of paintings and drawings based on Chinese opera masks, hockey goalie masks, soldiers, robots, and human-machine hybrids. The portraits, figures, immense heads and faces were developed in part from notes and sketches she recorded on her first trip to China in 1986, and recent works on robotics.

In 2000, Koop received the Community Builder's Award of the Manitoba Arts Council Foundation and in 2002, an honorary doctorate from the University of Winnipeg in recognition of her national and international artistic work and her work with Winnipeg's Art City, a storefront arts centre for inner-city youth at risk.

Her participation in the travelling exhibition Five Canadian Artists as part of the Think Canada Festival took her to Delhi, Madras and Bombay. An installation entitled In Your Eyes, the result of five years work, was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2001. In 2006 she was appointed a member of the Order of Canada. She is an elected member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. In 2007, Koop received an honorary doctorate from the Emily Carr Institute.

www.richmondartgallery.org