Just inside the entrance to the park at Third Avenue & Lorne Street one will find this large bronze sculpture which is well disguised as a stone carving. The artist is
Geert Maas, a noted Kelowna artist. The piece was originally done for the 2002 Thompson Okanagan Sculpture Symposium, an event organized by Westbank sculptor
Jock Hildebrand. The work was later bought by the city of Kamloops and placed here, in Riverside Park, for all to enjoy.
Very much abstracted, this work is quite representative of Maas's style, the figures being very rotund. This sculpture has not only human figures, but masks incorporated into the figures, as well.
Maas was born in The Netherlands, where he attended Academies of Art in The Hague. In 1979, Maas moved to Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, with his family. There, he and his wife Elly created the Geert Maas Sculpture Gardens and Gallery which feature one of the largest collections of bronze sculptures in Canada and a diverse selection of his other artwork.
Works by Geert Maas are admired worldwide, and are represented in prestigious public, corporate, and private collections in more than thirty countries.
From Geert Maas Galleries
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