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Charisma Gallery is proud to carry the art of acclaimed Canadian William Allister.
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He has wandered in far corners of the globe in his quest for adventure and the fulfillment of his artistic vision.
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Mr. Allister was born in Benito, Manitoba in 1919, and grew up in Montreal, where he pursued his talents for painting and acting.
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He enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1941 and volunteered for a secret mission in the Far East. The ill-fated expedition to Hong Kong ended with its surrender and the imprisonment of William Allister and many of his comrades in Japan where they were used as slave labour.
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After the war, Allister returned to Canada to continue with his acting career and then moved to Hollywood where he worked as an actor and a documentary filmmaker, eventually winning 9 international first prizes for documentary films.
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However, feeling "that the jungle values of Hollywood were lower than the jungle values of prison camp" he moved to New York in 1949 and began to earn his living as a painter while simultaneously writing his first novel, A Handful of Rice. That book won a first prize for literature in 1961, and was translated into Dutch and Norwegian.
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In the 60's, William Allister moved to Mexico with his wife and young children to further study and develop his abstract painting. Since then, he has exhibited his fine art in galleries across Canada and in Charisma Gallery since 1996.
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However, his traumatic experiences in the POW camps continued to haunt him, and in 1983 he returned to Japan hoping to resolve the memories that still tormented him.
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During an extended stay of several months as he gradually exorcised the demons from the war, he developed a deep appreciation for Japan's culture and people and a better understanding of the causes of the war.
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In 1986 his efforts as a writer were acknowledged when he was presented with an Author's Award by the League for the Advancement of Canadian Letters.
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William Allister's memoir, WHERE LIFE AND DEATH HOLD HANDS ( Stoddart Publishing 1989, paperback edition 2000, Restila Publishing) was published in Japanese in 2001, and won the Canadian Prime Minister's Award for the promotion of inter-cultural relations.
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William Allister and his wife Mona, now live in the lower mainland of B.C.
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He has held over 30 one-man shows to date. His work is in collections in Canada, France, South Africa, Mexico, the U.S. and Japan, and reproductions of his work are sold worldwide. William Allister's art celebrates the joy and mysteries of life that we often walk amongst blindly.
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His exuberant, bright paintings include the following images all of which have appeared at Charisma Gallery. Feel free to click on any thumbnail to see a larger image.
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