Denyse Thomasos: Odyssey

Softcover, 80 pages
McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 2021
Authors - Esi Edugyan, Gaetane Verna, Emma Doubt, Sarah Milroy

Denyse Thomasos (1964 - 2012) was a leading Trinidadian-Canadian painter whose epic paintings gather imagery drawn from a range of sources: woven Caribbean textiles,?slave ships, graveyards, villages, prison blocks, and shipyards.Denyse Thomasos: Odyssey, co-curated by Gaëtane Verna and Sarah Milroy, commemorates her brilliant but too-short career. Extensive international travels and deep research fuelled her understanding of humanity, and how we organize ourselves in physical and social space. The resulting works enact a delicate balance between representation and?abstraction, and?hold a unique place in the history of Canadian art, adding to the narrative from which BIPOC voices have for too long been excluded. The publication includes an interview of Gaëtane Verna by Sarah Milroy and an essay by leading Canadian novelist, Esi Edugyan.