Mercurio Artist
Myfanwy Spencer Pavelic
Born in Victoria in 1916. At the age of 8 she met the influential artist, Emily Carr. Carr invited Pavelic, then 15, to show her drawings in an exhibition at Carr's Peoples' Gallery. The two artists corresponded until Carr's death in 1945. During WWII she painted portraits across Canada for the Red Cross, raising $10,000 for the war effort. She participated in the B.C. Artists Exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery annually and in 1943 won the Beatrice Stone Silver Medal for best painting and the W. H. Malkin Medal for best drawing.
In 1944, she moved into the legendary Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan, where she later met and married her husband Nikola Pavelic. Most of the next two decades or so they divided their time between New York and Victoria, finally settling in Saanich in 1971.
Despite movements such as Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism and Conceptual Art, it was portraiture and realism that would hold primary importance for Pavelic. Her interest in abstraction and minimalism influenced her formal use of colour. She combined simple shapes and loose colours to create her realistic impressions. In 1968, she spent time experimenting with collage and the reduction of complex images into simplified shapes.
During the 1970s Pavelic became part of a significant group of Victoria artists, the Limners, officially formed at her studio on May 31, 1971. Pavelic focused on portraiture, accepting commissions for such high profile subjects as Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Katherine Hepburn, and Sir Yehudi Menuhin, as well as fellow Limners and numerous other people who have shaped Victoria's cultural life.
The Sooke Museum, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Maltwood Museum of the University of Victoria each have received extensive collections of her work. Her official portrait of Trudeau was unveiled in the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa in 1985, and one her Menuhin portraits was purchased by Lord Thomson of Fleet and now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Pavelic became a member of the Order of Canada in 1984 and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Victoria 1984), and was named a member of the Order of British Columbia in 2001.
Died Victoria 2007.