Facets of Eros: The Drawings of Claire Wilks

With no dominant art form in the 1970s and early ’80s the Toronto art scene was in formation. This was a time when there were no models and anything was possible. During this key period Toronto thought itself Canada’s most important art centre, but history has shown that the nascent downtown art community – not the established uptown scene of commercial galleries – was where it was happening. Claire Wilks was a part of that downtown community, except she was a woman in what was often a “man’s world,” drawing nude women and men, alone and together; passion and aggression and compassion; the beauty of the human body expressed… something not readily accepted in those days! This period was the beginning of her 40-year career.

David Sobelman is an award-winning writer of feature documentaries (Runaways: 24 Hours on the Street, 1987; McLuhan’s Wake, 2002; Samuel Bak: Painter of Questions, 2004). His first book of poetry, After the End, was published in 2006. He has also published several literary and philosophical essays. Born to an old Jewish French family in Haifa, Israel, Sobelman was schooled in Europe. In 1972, he moved to Toronto to study film and literature at York University. After graduating, he decided to stay in exile and make his home in Canada. He lives in Oakville, Ontario.

Claire Wilks was a Canadian artist who worked in conté drawing, brush drawing, lithography, monoprinting, and sculpture in bronze and clay. Her works are in numerous private collections in Canada and abroad, and have been exhibited in the National Gallery of Canada, and in Toronto, Calgary, Stockholm, New York, Jerusalem, Venice, Rome, Zagreb, Mexico City and Monterrey, Mexico. She died in 2017.