| Summary: | The China Diary, Canadian watercolour landscape painter Toni Onley's
account of his travel experiences in China from February 20 - March 21, 1988, is
one of the many fascinating documents within the Toni Onley fonds at the
Special Collections Division of the University of British Columbia Library. In
creating an annotated edition of the China Diary, photographs of Onley's fifteen
diary illustrations have been included. Also included are references in the
extensive annotations and appendices to various items in the collection and their
location for further investigation. This edition of the diary can serve as an
introductory guide to the UBC Toni Onley fonds as well as a document to further
one's knowledge about the artist's life and art. Onley's China Diary contains
information about how the artist understands his painting process and how Asian
art, culture, and spirituality have influenced his technique and style as a
landscape painter. The diary is also valuable for understanding cultural
interaction and cultural identity formation, because in the diary, Onley describes
his heightened awareness of his Canadian identity and culture as he encounters
various aspects of Asian culture.
The introduction gives biographical information on Toni Onley, discusses
the general development of his artwork, presents some of the criticism Onley has
received for his work, contextualizes the diary within Onley's life, and within
Canadian culture more generally. A discussion of the value of Onley's collection
in the field of Canadian literature is also included in the introduction for the
collection contains documents in which Toni Onley readily writes himself into
some of the received Canadian narratives of the rugged wilderness adventurer. === Arts, Faculty of === English, Department of === Graduate
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