20”x 39” ,30”x 11” Artist signed lower right A painter, printmaker, illustrator and educator, Irene Klar was born in Montreal, Quebec and has lived in Edmonton, Alberta since 1973. Her works are in several corporate and public collections and the images from her paintings and prints are featured in the designs of a plethora of apparel, household and gift items.Her primary mediums are acrylics, watercolors, serigraphs*, etchings* and giclee* prints. Her best known subjects are based on aboriginal cultures; they include figures, genre, history, traditions and social commentary. Her travels in Alaska, Australia, Canada, Guatemala, Peru and Morocco are said to inspire her work. Her best known styles could be described as Fauvism* or Modernism*; but she also has created works that could be described as Abstraction*, Geometric Abstraction* and Synthetic Cubism*. Works such as Ready to Raise the Centre Pole and Towards Bright Angel are good illustrations of her best known style and subjects.In addition to fine art paintings and prints, Klar’s images are adorned on popular retail items such as jackets, robes, shirts, scarves, cushion covers, glass ornaments, bookmarks, coasters, fridge magnets, handbags, journals, mouse pads and stationary. She also illustrated the children’s book Nine Minutes by Hye-eun Shin and Joy Cowley.Klar is a graduate of the University of Alberta, Edmonton where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (1977). She taught watercolor painting at the University of Alberta Faculty of Extension for a decade (1978 – 1987) and lectured in Art History at Grant MacEwan Community College (now MacEwan University), Edmonton (1978). (1)Her works were included with Molly Lamb Bobak, Ghitta Caiserman-Roth, Emily Carr, Audrey Capel Doray, Dorothy Knowles, Kenojuak Ashevak, Kathleen Morris, Lilias Torrance Newton and Marion Scott – a who’s who of great Canadian women artists – in the 1984 exhibition “Canvassing: Women Artists at McGill” (McGill University, Montreal).Klar’s works have also been featured in solo and group exhibitions at prominent commercial galleries such as the West End Gallery, Victoria; Douglas Udell Gallery, Vancouver and Edmonton; Wallace Galleries, Calgary; Hollander York Gallery, Toronto; Art Mode Gallery, Ottawa; Adagio Galleries, Palm Springs; and Joan Cawley Gallery, Scottsdale.According to the Canadian Heritage Information Network* and individual museum sources, her works are in the permanent collections of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts (Edmonton, Alberta), the Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton) and the Canada Council Art Bank* (Ottawa, Ontario). They are also in numerous corporate collections.According to the Irene Klar website her works are in the collections of Air Canada, Athabasca University, Bank of Montreal, CIBC Leasing, Edmonton Public School Board, Etobicoke Board of Education, Esso Resources, International Business Forms, MacKenzie Financial Corp., Marriott Hotels, Pratt & Whitney, Royal Bank of Canada, University of Alberta and W.C.McKenzie Health Science Centre.