181 Days and Counting…
September 18th, 2020 - November 7th, 2020
Toni Onley Gallery
Featured Artist:
Dirk Van Stralen
Dirk Van Stralen saw his first cartoon published in Coquitlam’s Tri-City News in 1987. In 1990 he began a 17 year relationship with the Georgia Straight producing the much loved and award-winning weekly single panel cartoon, vanstralen. The cartoons stopped running in the Straight in 2007.
In the years that followed, Dirk and his partner Julia Mackey moved to Wells, BC where he worked as the Marketing Manager for Barkerville Historic Town and Park from 2012 to 2015. During that time, he also produced cartoons to accompany writing by Danette Boucher, who currently interprets Miss Florence Wilson at Barkerville. These cartoons and columns were published in the Prince George Citizen. At the same time he illustrated two wordless kids’ books: Ben’s Big Dig and Ben’s Bunny Trouble, published by Orca Books. He also undertook freelance design work, designing logos for the ArtsWells Festival and ads for Barkerville.
Over the past ten years the majority of his time, effort, and passion have been devoted to theater, and in particular working with his partner Julia, as the Director and Stage Manager of her multi-award winning one woman play, Jake’s Gift. The play has toured to more than 250 communities across Canada, the UK, and France.
As the reality of the COVID-19 started to sweep across North America, Dirk and Julia started to see the impact of the pandemic directly affecting them, as one after the other, the bookings for their annual spring tour were cancelled. Suddenly Dirk found himself with an abundance of time to actually think, and for the first time in over a decade, he could dedicate himself wholly to a project of his own. On March 21st he drew his first cartoon.
Since then, he has produced a drawing a day, except for Good Friday and July 15, publishing them on social media and though his website. On the two days he skipped, Dirk revisited his Georgia Straight archive, selecting works he felt were still current and in keeping with his ongoing narrative. In creating each day’s commentary he doesn’t write with a specific audience in mind, but rather follows his own observations of what is transpiring in the world. Dirk’s work is starting to receive a great deal of interest since being featured on CBC and in the Quesnel Observer.
Paul Crawford, Curator
