Carle Hessay: the sign painter who became Langley's great artist

In 1950 a German-born painter opened a hand-lettered sign shop in Langley and lived in a curtained-off space at the back that doubled as his studio. For the next 28 years, Carle Hessay made his living painting other people’s signs and made his art in the back room. Very few people noticed while he was alive.

Before Langley

He was born Hans Karl Hesse in Dresden in 1911 (a few 1970s newspaper stories said Shanghai, but his citizenship papers say Dresden) and came to Canada with his mother in 1927, at 15. He’d started painting at 14 and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the art academy in Dresden. After the Second World War he lived in a shack on Passage Island and fished for a living, then worked briefly in a Vancouver commercial art studio.

The Langley years

Soon after arriving he met the sculptor, composer and writer Leonard Woods, who would co-found the Langley Community Music School in 1969. They stayed friends for life, and it was Woods who did the most to keep Hessay’s name alive afterward.

His early work was romantic realism. Over time, influenced by Expressionism, Emily Carr and the Group of Seven, it moved toward abstraction. He painted landscapes, cityscapes, scenes from the Spanish Civil War, biblical subjects and a strange futuristic series called The Hollow World. He mixed many of his own pigments from minerals and plants, and black was his signature colour. In 1967 he painted a mural for the Langley Evangelical Free Church.

He had solo shows in Langley in 1973 and 1977. He died suddenly at a New Year’s dance in Spuzzum on January 1, 1978, at 66, and was buried at Langley Lawn Cemetery.

After

The recognition came late, and Langley led it:

• 1980. A retrospective at the Langley Centennial Museum, curated by Warren Sommer.
• 2005. Leonard Woods publishes Meditations on the Paintings of Carle Hessay.
• 2009. Four Hollow World paintings are shown in public for the first time.
• 2014. For Kelly, with Love, a book of poems written in response to his small abstracts.
• 2017. A show at the University of Victoria’s Audain Gallery, and a documentary, The Art and Soul of Carle Hessay, As We Knew Him.

His work is in the collections of the Langley Centennial Museum and the Penticton Art Gallery. The museum, now part of salishan Place by the River in Fort Langley, rotates what’s on display, so check its current exhibits before you go if you’re hoping to see a Hessay.

There’s no licensed photo of Hessay or his paintings we can use, so the picture is of the museum that holds them. For other Langley artists, see actors, artists and writers from Langley.