ECU 100 | The Legacy of ECU Alumni Who Served as War Artists

As we mark 100 years of Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECU), we are looking back at some of the many ways our alumni have contributed to public life in Canada. Among them are several graduates and former instructors from the Vancouver School of Art (VSA), the institution that would later become ECU, including Orville Fisher, Paul Goranson, and Molly Lamb Bobak, who served as official Canadian war artists during the Second World War.

Their paintings, sketches and field work helped document the experiences of service members and civilians at a time of global conflict. These artistic practices remind us how creativity can be a way of witnessing history, processing its impacts and shaping how it is remembered.

Documenting a Country at War

The Canadian war art tradition emerged between 1916 and 1919, when a newspaper publisher and businessman named Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook) created the Canadian War Memorials Fund. Its organizing committee commissioned over 116 artists to portray Canada’s participation in the First World War.

This program produced over 1,000 artworks across various media, including canvas, sculptures, and sketches, by British and Canadian artists, such as Frederick Varley, a Group of Seven member and VSA professor from 1926 to 1933.

By the Second World War, the program returned as the Canadian War Records, where Bobak, Goranson, and Fisher were among the 32 artists assigned to create detailed and realistic depictions of specific scenes.

With their training under Varley and other early artistic mentors at the VSA, these alumni were able to create works that were deeply personal and reflective of their experiences. Their time at the VSA highlights how art and design were crucial tools in interpreting the world around them and contributing to the national project.

For Dr. Stacey Barker, Historian, Arts and Military History at the Canadian War Museum, the war artists showcased their style amidst the rules imposed by the government.

“The intent this time was a bit more documentary than during the First World War. The artists were given clearer instructions and asked to focus on accuracy, including details such as uniforms, equipment, and specific locations and events,” said Dr. Barker. “That approach resulted in about 5,000 works. They were generally smaller in scale than the First World War painting, but even so, there are some striking and evocative pieces that left us with a rich artistic legacy of the warfront.”

After finishing their studies at VSA, Paul Goranson, Orville Fisher, and their compatriot E.J. Hughes collaborated on murals and enlisted in the army shortly after, while Molly Lamb Bobak joined the Canadian Women's Army Corps in 1942.

The Emotional Terrain of War Art

Balancing the needs of documentation with their artistic styles is something that Orville Fisher navigated with his frontline role. That immediacy was apparent in Fisher’s works from D-Day, where he was one of the only Allied war artists to land that day. His painting “The Assault” captures the frantic scenes around him with soldiers being attacked and shooting as they fight their way onto the shore.

“He threw a lot of his extra art supplies overboard when he was coming ashore, but he had a couple of waterproof pads, and he was able to do quick field sketches of what he was seeing,” said Dr. Barker. “It’s his most intense painting, because if you look closely, there’s another soldier in the background who’s been hit by something, where his arms are flying up, his helmet’s coming off, so Fisher’s actually depicting the combat.”

Fisher’s other significant painting, “Battle of the Carpiquet Field,” shows his eye for surrealism with an aircraft hangar that resembles a ribcage. “He had an instinct for the surreal nature of war,” said Dr. Barker. “It really stands out in terms of showing the ruins of war.”

The Everyday Efforts of Servicewomen

Unlike Goranson and Fisher, who joined the war effort in 1941, Molly Lamb Bobak enlisted in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps in 1942. By early 1945, she was the only female war artist in the program.

From paintings that show women folding laundry and operating switchboards to participating in training drills, Bobak illustrated the everyday aspects of the war and her fellow servicewomen, whose contributions were not widely represented in official records or public imagery.

In contrast to the seriousness and dark palette of the male war artists, Bobak’s work features more warmth and a slight humour. Her work reflects servicewomen adapting to new roles and responsibilities, capturing both the novelty and shared humanity of their experiences.

“Up until now, servicewomen were only able to serve as nurses, so there’s a real sense of newness in what she’s showing, and almost a bit of whimsy in her approach,” said Dr. Barker. “In ‘Gas Drill,’ they’re awkwardly handling the masks, figuring out how to put them on. There’s a lightness in the way she portrays her fellow servicewomen. And then later, when she goes overseas and sees the dark ruins of war, she channels that into her work too.”

The Immediacy of the Medium

For an artist like Paul Goranson, who joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941, painting was a way to infuse the personal with the documentary requirements imposed on war artists.

“If you take Goranson's painting 'Torpedoed North Atlantic,' it’s based on an actual event, where he was on a ship that was torpedoed,” said Dr. Barker. “He put himself into the work in the same way Fisher did. They’re both channelling their own experiences into their art in a way that maybe a photographer can’t.”

As Dr. Barker highlights, these ECU alumni were also veterans who may have used their art as a way to unburden themselves of the terrifying images and scenes they brought back home and transmit them through the canvas. The medium they used to express this trauma has a different sense of immediacy than photography or filmmaking from that era could convey.

“Art has a different kind of power. It lets you take different moments and layer them together to create something that carries emotional truth. A photograph captures one instant, one fixed point in time. But painting lets you combine those moments, those feelings, into a single image that resonates differently.

The enduring power of art is a defining trait throughout ECU’s history, and these alumni were able to respond to their times with empathy and determination, helping us to understand their perspectives during the chaos of wartime.

Shaping a Collective Memory

Through their work, Fisher, Goranson, and Bobak crafted imagery of World War II that surpassed the constraints of fully realized paintings and still resonates today.

“They were also observers and reporters and transmitters of a wartime experience through art. Artists today can be just as deeply moved by what they see happening around the world, and they can respond through their art in much the same way. In doing so, they’re really following in the footsteps of those official war artists.”

Today, many of their wartime paintings are preserved in the Canadian War Museum and National Gallery of Canada, where they continue to be shared, studied and cared for, ensuring that their contributions to history and art continue to educate future generations.

As we commemorate the artists who defined ECU’s first century, their stories remind us that art evolves once it leaves the classroom. In recording the world around them, Fisher, Goranson and Bobak used their artistic training to tell truths that might otherwise be lost. Their work exemplifies the long-held ECU value of creating meaningful change through art and design, a commitment that continues to guide our students, faculty and alumni today.