{"id":11177,"date":"2015-10-29T06:43:54","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T13:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=11177"},"modified":"2015-10-19T09:45:36","modified_gmt":"2015-10-19T16:45:36","slug":"author-explores-historical-and-cultural-context-of-bc-artists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2015\/10\/29\/author-explores-historical-and-cultural-context-of-bc-artists\/","title":{"rendered":"Author explores historical and cultural context of BC artists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pender Island-based writer Maria Tippett, who grew up in Victoria, has always had words in her blood. Her latest book, Made in British Columbia<\/i>, is just the most recent example of a passion she\u2019s had since she was young.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a child I wrote a play,\u201d she says. \u201cI was about seven. I performed it at my school. I had always written; I wrote a novel when I was about 12. It was dreadful. Writing was a way to express myself and my relation with the rest of the world, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Made in British Columbia <\/i>examines the lives of eight individuals: visual artists Emily Carr and Bill Reid, architects Frances Rattenbury and Arthur Erikson, writers George Woodcock and Martin Grainger, and musicians Jean Couthard and George Ryga. They each have a distinct but equally important influence on the development of British Columbian culture, which Tippett wanted to explore further.<\/p>\n

\"BC<\/a>
BC author Maria Tippett says she doesn\u2019t believe in writer\u2019s block (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI wanted to know about Emily Carr, and I wanted to know about other artists around her,\u201d explains Tippett. \u201cI wanted to know about landscape painters who were painting before her who were painting the British Columbian landscape. I wanted to know about her political situation. I wanted to know about her financial situation. One of the myths is that Emily was a poor starving artist, but that, of course, was not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tippett says that the book helps the reader understand the larger picture of what was going on during the times of the people profiled in its pages.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to look at the broad picture,\u201d she says. \u201cThe narrow picture would be the life and the work of the person I\u2019m writing about, but it\u2019s the social, political, and cultural context as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Made in British Columbia <\/i>is Tippett\u2019s 15th book. Her first, Emily Carr: A Biography<\/i>, came out in 1979. She says that writing books is difficult but adds that it has gotten easier for her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never had a block,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t believe in writer\u2019s block. Writing is a job, and it\u2019s just like any other job, so whether I\u2019m a carpenter or writer or whatever, there are challenges in whatever you do. In writing it\u2019s just keeping it going: keeping it all in your head, pushing it along, and devoting all of your time to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tippett sticks to a routine when getting her books together, which includes time for exercise and uninterrupted writing. For her, writing is something you set a routine for and then get done.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a matter of doing it every day,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not just something you do when you feel like it. If you want to be a writer you need a lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pender Island-based writer Maria Tippett, who grew up in Victoria, has always had words in her blood. Her latest book, Made in British Columbia, is just the most recent example of a passion she\u2019s had since she was young. \u201cWhen I was a child I wrote a play,\u201d she says. \u201cI was about seven. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,153],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-arts","category-october-21-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11179,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11177\/revisions\/11179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}