How notable artist Geert Maas made Kelowna home
Kelowna’s Geert Maas is an internationally acclaimed artist whose bronze and stainless steel works can be seen around the city and far beyond.
His sculpture garden and gallery draws in collectors and curators, school groups and tourists, and is home to one of the biggest bronze statue collections in the country.
Born in the Netherlands in 1944, it was a series of twists and turns that landed Maas and his family in Kelowna in 1979. His lifetime journey as an artist began in a small village where he was born and raised.
“I went to elementary school and the teacher handed out images like a vase with flowers and asked everyone to copy what he gave them,” he said. “I always added something to it. He would take his glasses off and say ‘that’s not what I see’, and I thought it was boring.”
Growing up, Maas worked at a ceramics studio a couple of villages away where he made vases and “all kinds of stuff” and when he was 18 he joined a famous painter where he discovered his first artistic passion.
“He (the painter) worked in a basement under the church and allowed me to use his studio,” Maas said. “I’d pick up the key at his mom’s place and go there. Painting was my first passion.”
Maas later went to Academies of Art in The Hague where he took up sculpture, painting and model painting and drawing, and became a teacher.
“I learned a lot there, we had a good instructor for sculpture. I noticed he used my work as an example to other students so I must have been doing something right.”
Maas met the love of his life, his wife Elly, and they moved south and renovated a farmhouse that was over a century old with “old beams and really old floor tiles.” The renovations increased the value of the home so much that the higher taxes made it unaffordable. The pair came to Canada to visit family in Ontario.
“I looked in the newspaper at values of farm houses there and it was inexpensive, so we thought we’d emigrate to Canada and find a farmhouse and property,” he said. “Because of the atmosphere amongst Dutch immigrants in Ontario we decided to go west. I read about the Okanagan, there was no internet at the time, Okanagan Lake looked nice.”
In 1979, the pair purchased the house and land and began creating the Geert Maas Sculpture Gardens and Gallery. Today there are two acres of sculpture garden outside with roughly 50 works and hundreds of works in the gallery inside.
“Anybody coming here is always amazed at the quantity and quality of the works. Sometimes they get really emotional. I like that it doesn’t get too emotional because I hate to see crying people. All these people come every year to see the new works, there is so much to see they can’t comprehend everything.”
The artist works in two and three dimensions in a variety of media including sculpture, painting and metallic art. His favourite medium is bronze, followed by stainless steel, and used to work with clay after coming from an area in the Netherlands where there was lots of it.
Maas is turning 79 this year and is still making art —“age is just a number” — and doesn’t appear to run out of energy or creative ideas.
“In the past I had a shoe box and when I got an idea I’d write it down and once in a while I pulled out of the shoebox, and that would be the subject of my next work,” he said.
Maas created a bronze statue of five rotund sunbathers on a large, curving base in 2002 that was purchased by the city and is located in Kelowna’s Waterfront Park. The piece is called On the Beach.
“When our kids were small we went to the beach often but since I burn quickly I’d sit in the shade and observe people,” he said. “I noticed people in bathing suites and swimming trunks behave differently than when they’re wearing clothes, and it inspired the works.”
Also in Kelowna is Circle of Friendship, a stainless steel statue, and Spirit of Kelowna, made of cast bronze medallions. There is a ten-foot bronze statue Community in Motion at Riverside Park in Kamloops.
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Maas’s works have been shown in numerous exhibitions and represented in prestigious public, corporate and private art collections worldwide.
He has delivered lectures in community centers, galleries and universities, put on numerous workshops for sculpture, lead workshops and delivered seminars around the province and beyond.
The artist has been featured on television documentaries and the subject of endless radio interviews and articles over the years and earned a multitude of awards and acknowledgements.
Geert Maas Sculpture Gardens and Gallery is located at 250 Reynolds Road in Kelowna and features many new works including dry needle point / hand coloured etchings, serigraphy, and wax cut art. Exhibitions change frequently and many of the art pieces are for sale.
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It’s open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and admission is by donation.
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