Colin D. Graham (RCA)

Colin Graham, founding director of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, was born in Vancouver in 1915. He received his B.A. from the University of Cambridge in 1939 and an M.A. in Art from the University of California in Berkeley in 1948. He subsequently became a Lecturer in Art History at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.

In 1951 he returned to Canada and assumed directorship of the AGGV, from which he retired in 1973 when he began painting. He received an honorary LLD from the University of Victoria in 1978 and had his first solo show in 1980, at Kyle’s Gallery in Victoria. Since the, Graham has exhibited widely, and his works are now in a number of prominent Canadian and American collections.

"It is often difficult to be optimistic about the way the modern world is going," he says, "but surrounded by landscapes as beautiful as those in Saanich, one can't help feeling cheerful."