Who Is Kim Ondaatje? The Inventive Life of a Canadian Artist

Who Is Kim Ondaatje? by Lola Tostevin is the biography of a driven and talented painter, photographer and filmmaker. Kim Ondaatje’s story takes us from her affluent childhood in early 20th Century Toronto to the burgeoning modern art and literary movements in Canada, with many notable characters along the way: meeting Queen Mary at Buckingham palace with Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; listening to young student Leonard Cohen read his poems at McGill University; promoting artist’s rights with contemporaries Greg Curnoe, Tony Urquhart and Jack Chambers; arguing with Irving Layton and F.R. Scott at literary gatherings; and drinking with Dylan Thomas at a Montreal pub, to name but a few. Her last major creation, Final Canvas, is an 8-acre landscape at her current home, Blueroof Farm in eastern Ontario. Author Lola Tostevin reveals an accomplished and complicated artist whose works are found in several permanent collections, including the National Art Gallery of Canada and the National Film Board.

Painter, photographer, filmmaker, gardener, dalmatian breeder, organic beef farmer, artist activist. Ondaatje has led an eventful life in the inner circles of Canadian artistic and literary communities. This biography from veteran writer Lola Tostevin reveals the drive and passion of this fascinating artist.