Chinatown in Art

Chinatown Artist Robert Amos

Robert Amos began his connection with Victoria’s Chinatown when, as an artist, he frequented the studios which sprang up there in the late 1970s. His first exhibition as a professional artist, in 1983, included a panoramic series of five paintings made from the second storey window of his studio on Fisgard Street.

Over the next decade his dozens of paintings of Chinatown brought him to the attention of Kileasa Wong, who has used his drawings on the cover of every issue of the Victoria Chinatown Newsletter, a Chinese-language publication of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. This research led to a series of paintings of the Association’s meeting halls which were first seen in the Times Colonist newspaper and subsequently as a book, Inside Chinatown. The book was presented with the Award of Distinction by Heritage BC. These paintings were shown at the University of Victoria’s Legacy Gallery in 2010. The source materials were purchased by the Archives of the University of Victoria in 2012.

Amos continues to paint Chinatown as part of his life’s work documenting Victoria. In addition to seven books of his art work and writing, he has written a weekly column On Art for the Times Colonist since 1986. He is named an Honorary Citizen of Victoria (1986) and was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts (1994). His paintings are part of the Civic Collection of the City of Victoria, the University of Victoria’s Art Collections and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. You are invited to contact him at www.robertamos.com and at his studio 250-389-0303.

Further Reading

Amos, Robert and Kileasa Wong. Inside Chinatown: Ancient Culture in a New World. Victoria, BC: TouchWood Editions, 2009.

Amos, Robert and Laura Langston. No Such Thing as Far Away. Victoria, BC: Orca Book Publishers, 1994.

Amos, Robert. Victoria. Victoria, BC: Orca Book Publishers, 1990.

Amos, Robert. Victoria: Another View. Victoria, BC: Orca Book Publishers, 1993.

Amos, Robert. Victoria Sketchbook. Victoria, BC: Orca Book Publishers, 2002.