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A n Affinity for the Sacred l o r some time now, painter Frederick who would lead Varley and others of what would come to be known as the G r o u p of Seven on wilderness painting expeditions. From these fertile associations would heave the birthing of a new consciousness in Canadian cultural history. Tippett's book provides exceptional insight into the development ofVarley's painterly vision, notably his wartime experience as an official military artist in the trenches of Flanders, where he learned to cut his own jib Horsman Varley has been overdue for solid biographical treatment. Yet, if comparatively little has been written about him,Varley's lingering mystique has remained secure, founded, as Maria Tippett's authoritative new book corroborates, on his vitriolic history as renegade artist par excellence. Spiritualist, wife deserter, and inveterate sponger,Varley lived and worked in Lynn Valley during the most significant period of his ten-year sojourn on the West Coast; a decade spanning the end of the jazz age and the worst years of the Depression. Regarded locally in much the same way as is Malcolm Lowry, the hard-drinking Varley persisted in making life difficult for himself with a lifelong feckless disregard for money and personal responsibility. W r i t t e n by Cambridge scholar and part-time Bowen Island resident Maria Tippett, Stormy Weather offers us a first in-depth look at the complex interplay of motivations fuelling this ferociously committed artist.And what a fine book she has given us. Having been born in 1881 to a modest Sheffield family,Varley grew up tramping the Yorkshire dales. It was here that Varley's love of rugged nature t o o k root, informing his devotion to the mystic divine and to a deepening interest in Buddhism and Brahminic traditions.Varley showed early promise in art and was guided by his father, a commercial printer, to local distinction. Graduating from the hothouse classical teaching environment at one of Europe's oldest art schools in Antwerp,Varley failed in tackling the commercial realities of London's art w o r l d -- a struggle which Tippett demonstrates he never adequately disciplined himself to master. Having married and quickly proven his shortcomings as father and provider,Varley emigrated to Toronto in 1912. It was while working as an illustrator there that he met Tom Thomson, a passionate outdoorsman as colourist and transmitter of the artist's emotional almanac.Varley drew notice from British artist Augustus John, whom he admired of all living painters, but, as Tippett shows.it was Varley's fate of achieving such breakthroughs but being unable to capitalize upon them that would dog him throughout his career. Returning to Canada,Varley's new painting strengths found an audience.The early 1920s of the Stormy Weather era marked his most influential period in Canadian art, and the reputation he gained as a G r o u p of Seven member earned him the teaching appointment in Vancouver which fetched him to the Pacific coast. He left his wife Maud to raise the fares for herself and their children. Trevor Carolan North Vancouver. Stormy Maria $35.0 Weather; Tippett, literary by Trevor Carolan Varley's Vancouver and Lynn Valley period marked the apotheosis of his life work.The close presence of mountain wilderness, ocean shore, and the city's o r i ental quarters suffused his pictures, many which became increasingly allegorical. His palette, too, grew uniquely identifiable, though as Tippett finds, this came by way of Vera Weatherbie, a former student with whom he had an incendiary love affair. O n e wishes, however, that Tippett had delved more deeply into the spiritual crisis that settled on Varley following his abandoning of wife and children for W e a t h e r b i e -- an inexcusable cruelty amid the blight of the Depression. It is this demonic part ofVarley, indeed, it is the whole crucial Lynn Valley period, that one wishes there were more of in Stormy Weather. Varley's sexual rapture with Weatherbie does not fare well by Tippett's academic reporting, and the intensely religious underpinning of his major works at Lynn is not nearly sufficiently addressed. However, in every other respect,Tippett's work is necessary information and her formidable archival research does make for terrifically enlightening reading.Varley romantics will enjoy this book's happy ending--a sophisticated ménage à trois with spunky old Fred Varley in his 70s. W e might have expected no less, and yet, and yet... Stormy Weather, Georgian Bay (detail). Cover image i Stormy W e a t h e r : F.H. Varley A Biography. F.H. Varley, A Biography, & Stewart, 360 by pp., McClelland is a councillor for the District Cove. of He writes from Deep