Artist Info

“Abstraction was too empty for me; it didn't say anything to me.”

- Myfanwy Pavelic -

Myfanwy Pavelic was one of Canada’s most renowned portraitists. Her portraits and paintings document succeeding generations of artists, musicians, composers and statesmen, from Yehudi Menuhin to Pierre Trudeau. Her work has been exhibited from Victoria, British Columbia to the National Gallery in London, England.

Myfanwy Pavelic, nee Spencer, was born in Victoria, BC, in 1916. At the age of six, she met the influential artist, Emily Carr, who mentored her and arranged a show of her drawings at Carr's Peoples' Gallery at the age of fifteen. The two artists corresponded until Carr’s death in 1945. Pavelic also had a love of music, and in 1932, began formal music education in Montreal and later at the University of British Columbia. Health problems prevented her from becoming a concert pianist, and she turned her creativity to drawing and painting.

During the Second World War, Pavelic painted portraits across Canada and donated the funds to the Red Cross. She spent much time in New York City, mixing with celebrities such as artists Malvina Hoffman, and musicians Andres Segovia and Vladimir Horowitz. In 1948, she married her second husband, Nikola Pavelic, son of the former Yugoslavian prime minister, before returning to Victoria. During the 1960’s, Pavelic spent much time in New York, drawn to the bustling art scene. Although the art movement at the time was towards Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism and Conceptual Art, Pavelic realized that her talent lay in Portraiture and Realism. Although she experimented in the late 1960’s with a combination of abstraction and realism through collage and simple shapes (Silent and Far Away, 1977), she came to realize that abstraction was too empty for her.

In the 1970s, Pavelic became part of Victoria’s Limners , a collective group of painters, sculptors, potters, and visual artists, which included Maxwell Bates, Robin Skelton, Herbert Siebner, Richard Ciccimarra, Karl Spreitz and Nita Forest. Their focus was in portraying the essence of human nature through art, as well as providing artistic, material and moral support to the members.

Pavelic focused most of her artistic career on the human figure and is renowned for her portrait paintings. She painted many musicians, including Yehudi Menuhin (now in Britain's National Portrait Gallery), Glenn Gould, Rostropovich, Segovia and Ravi Shankar. She also developed a long lasting friendship with actress Katherine Hepburn, which led to many sittings and portraits of Katherine. In 1990, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau chose her to create his official portrait, which now hangs in Parliament in Ottawa, and was later used on his Commemorative Stamp.

Pavelic received an honorary Doctorate from the University of Victoria, the Order of Canada in 1984, and in 2001 received the Order of British Columbia. She died peacefully on May 7, 2007.

Selected Corporate, Private and Public Collections

Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, BC
Maltwood Museum, University of Victoria, BC
Claridge Collection, Montreal, QC
National Portrait Gallery, London, UK
Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, ON
Sooke Museum

Source: Waddington’s