Last night, fans of former Vancouver Canucks netminder, now artist, Richard Brodeur, showed up at the Station House Gallery in Williams Lake for the opening of his exhibit The King and I.
“I am so grateful to you people to come here and support me tonight,” Brodeur said in his opening speech to the crowd, “If you like what you see, thank you. The King and I is the name of the show because the king is the hockey player, and the I is the artist that paints and creates.”
When Brodeur wasn’t busy talking about his artwork depicting childhood pond and street hockey games, as well as landscapes from the surrounding area, he was signing autographs for the young and young at heart.
He even took time to take part in a ceremonial face-off of a shiny game that was played in the Station House Gallery parking lot by members of a Williams Lake youth hockey team.
We asked Brodeur in an interview back in May when he first arrived in Williams Lake, if there was any connection to being an NHL goaltender and artist.
“Every time you sit down in front of a canvass you have the challenge to find the right way to see the perspective of what you’re going to do and as a goalie, it’s the same thing.” Brodeur said, “I’ts preparation about what you’re going to do, who are we going to play tonight, how are they playing, what’s their powerplay like so you have no surprises. I don’t just sit down in front of the canvass and start painting”.
Brodeur helped take the Canucks to the Stanley Cup Final in 1982 against the New York Islanders.
The King and I exhibit will be on display in the main gallery and in the upper gallery hockey memorabilia on loan from the Museum of the Cariboo and local residents can be viewed from July 8 to August 27 at the Station House Gallery in Williams Lake.