Hans Karl Hesse, known in later life as Carle Hessay (30 November 1911 – 1 January 1978),McMann 2003, p. 101.Hilmo, in Woods 2005, p. v. was a German-born Canadian painter. Although much remains uncertain of his early years, he immigrated to Canada in 1927, and later studied at art academies in Paris and Dresden. Hessay served as a Canadian soldier in World War II. After the establishment of peace, he moved to British Columbia, eventually settling in the town of Langley, where he took up art again in the 1950s. Some of his early paintings were done in the manner of Romantic realism. The influence of Expressionism soon became significant, with Hessay drawing on both the European and American movements, together with aspects of Emily Carr and the Group of Seven.
Hessay painted landscapes throughout his artistic life, as well as cityscapes, the Spanish Civil War, Biblical prophecy, and conceptions of the far future. A sizable fraction of his output consisted of abstract pieces. Over time, Hessay's depictions grew more symbolic, one commentator describing his late work as "brazenly metaphysical and apocalyptic".White, 18 June 1980.Woods 2005, p. 25. He often made his own pigments, and his style is distinguished by his use of colour, especially black. In 2014, a group of Canadian writers published poems based on his small abstracts. Hessay was the subject of a 2017 documentary film and art exhibition at the University of Victoria.
Early life Hessay was born as Hans Karl Hesse in Dresden, Germany, on 30 November 1911. Accounts of the first few decades of his life are fragmentary and sometimes contradictory.Hilmo 2023, p. 7. His father worked as a shipping agent for Norddeutscher Lloyd until World War II.Hilmo 2025, p. 80. Hessay attended a boarding school run by monks in Vienna, but he ran away to Bulgaria and eventually to Constantinople. He was caught by police and deported back, where he was severely punished. Six months later, Hessay ran away again, this time to the Dutch coast.MacDonald 1979, addendum. He worked on a herring boat and recalled scaling fish in Arctic seas.Hilmo 2025, p. 82. Despite these travails, Hessay received a well-rounded education that included art, history, languages, and gymnastics. In 1927, just before turning sixteen, he immigrated to Canada with his mother on the CPR steamship Montrose.Hilmo 2025, p. 81.
Having begun painting at the age of fourteen, Hessay soon returned to Europe where a sympathetic boat captain allowed him to attend art school during the off season."Carle Hessay has painted for 51 years", 27 April 1977. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Kunstakademie in Dresden."One Man Show at Arts Centre", 22 June 1972. He learned how to isolate pigments and create glazes, skills he later used in making his own colours from minerals and plants.
Hessay left Germany when the Nazi party came to power. He then led a vagabond life, travelling the world periodically as a commercial mariner, rising to the position of second mate. For some time he did drawings and watercolours from medical slides in French Chad. His first glimpse of British Columbia occurred at Port Alberni, when his ship arrived to load lumber. Impressed by the climate, he wanted to record the geography, sea, and rocks of the area.Anderson, 22 December 2006."Carle Hessay show at arts centre", 27 April 1977. Hessay fought in the Spanish Civil War for a short period. While his boat was docked in Spain, he was captured and imprisoned by Moorish guards. Since he spoke several languages, he was given greater freedom while being put to work translating letters. Hessay organized an escape party that stole a small boat and crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Africa."Escape Artist", 2006. In 1938, he arrived back in Canada,MacDonald 1979, addendum. and went on to serve in the Second World War as a corporal in the Royal Canadian Engineers. He was the sole surviving member of a platoon that cleared minefields.Woods 2005, p. 21.
British Columbia Hessay's first home in British Columbia after WWII was a shanty on Passage Island.Hilmo, in Woods 2005, p. 33. In spite of being impaired by posttraumatic stress disorder, he took up the life of a fisherman.Hilmo 2014, p. xi. He then worked briefly in a commercial arts studio in Vancouver where he made posters for the Lyric Theatre.
In 1950, Hessay moved to Langley, a town in the Fraser Valley. He soon met Langley resident Leonard Woods, a former student of LeMoine FitzGerald, and a multi-talented sculptor, musician, poet, and art historian. At the time of their first meeting, Woods was reopening the sculpture department at the Vancouver School of Art.Hilmo, in Woods 2005, pp. v–vi. In a later recollection, Woods described Hessay as being "in a very critical condition, mentally and physically". The pair became life-long friends, and Hessay valued Woods' encouragement within a loosely knit artistic circle that included the painter Peter Ewart, along with John McTaggart, an art teacher at Langley High School.Sommer, Warren; in Wang 2017."Fort pupils react to art display", 11 June 1964.
In Langley, he opened up a sign shop, in the days when signs were still made by hand. Hessay lived in a rear curtained-off area, his furnishings consisting of a cot, hot plate, and table and chairs.Hilmo, in Woods 2005, p. iii.Woods 2005, p. 3. When he returned to creating art in the early 1950s, these spartan accommodations doubly functioned as a studio. According to Woods, "paintings were everywhere". On weekends, he often closed his shop to travel to the Fraser Canyon and the British Columbia interior, where he panned for gold. Hessay once had a prospector's shack near the Old Alexandra Bridge, in the vicinity of Spuzzum.Hilmo, in Woods 2005, p. i.Woods 2005, p. 9. He enjoyed visiting First Nations reserves, where he found social acceptance.Youssef, 25 December 2005. His artistic output was initially reflective of his European training. Aware of experiments taking place in New York and California, he began to produce many works of pure or semi-abstraction, alongside his landscapes inspired by the British Columbia wilderness.Hilmo, in Woods 2005, pp. i–iii.Hilmo 2014, pp. ix., xii. A member of the Federation of Canadian Artists, he participated in group exhibits, displayed at local art galleries, and had one-man shows in British Columbia and elsewhere.Hilmo 2014, p. viii. Hessay died of a heart attack on 1 January 1978 while attending a New Year's dance at the Sasquatch Inn in Spuzzum. He is buried at Langley Lawn Cemetery.
Artistry Painting materials and technique Hessay commonly experimented with mixed media.Woods 2005, p. vii. Having an interest in the chemistry of painting, he often made his own pigments from minerals and resins gathered on his prospecting trips. Black was derived from grinding manganese.Thorpe, 11 December 1971. He also employed cooked fruits and vegetables, such as onion-skin dyes, potato water, and carrots.Gleeson, 25 November 1976. Further materials included egg white and house paint. His canvases were prepared with fifteen coats of gesso ground made according to his own formula.
In the manner of action painting, Hessay frequently painted in a free and vigorous manner, spilling and dragging pigments over one another.Woods 2005, p. 5.Hooper, 11 May 2017. One of his paintings was done with a toothbrush.
Style His early paintings from the late 1950s were in the style of Romantic realism, one critic describing them as "pretty but not sentimental". From his Dresden background, he retained the aesthetic qualities of the German Expressionist painters Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, and Franz Marc.Woods 2005, p. 21. This enduring early influence, overlaid by the Canadian landscape tradition, gives a unique quality to much of his work.Hilmo 2025, p. 78. Hessay appreciated First Nations art, admiring the Kwakwaka'wakw artist Mungo Martin, and he knew Bill Reid.Hilmo, in Woods 2005, p. ii. His aim in painting was to create a "new, original experience", and his paintings typically emote drama and intensity of feeling, rather than lyricism.Woods 2005, p. 31. Many contain a predominance of strongly contrasting shapes and angles.Woods 2005, p. 17. His painting Immigrant Mother and Child employs instability and distorted perspectives, a psychological reflection on his first arrival to Canada.
Hessay characteristically used colour to register a dominant emotional tone, reinforcing the thematic content. He considered black to be his trademark as a painter.Woods 2005, p. 27. The monochrome ochre and setting of Abandoned Village, a painting from his Cabins to Cities series, recalls the mood of Emily Carr's Blunden Harbour. At times his landscapes have parallels to those of the Group of Seven.Woods 2005, pp. 11, 25.Hooper, 6 October 2016. Some of his works lack any reference points, and fit comfortably within the history of Abstract expressionism. Other semi-abstract pieces are infused with hints of nature, commonly oriented by a feature which directs the viewer's perception.Hilmo 2014, pp. x–xii. Several abstracts relate to his prospecting in their evocation of rock formations.
Themes Hessay's paintings reference a wide spectrum of contemporary and historical material, ranging from the modern city, to scenes inspired by mythology and the Bible, the horrors of war, futuristic visions, and the place of humanity within nature. He liked his pictures to tell a story, but preferred to leave their interpretation up to the viewer. When asked once if his paintings were symbolic, he replied, "of course they are".
The artist's landscapes frequently place the observer squarely within the midst of an untamed wilderness, in the deadfall of roots and tree trunks, the chaos of fallen rocks, a great depth of snow, or the center of a great swamp.Woods 2005, p. 23. Some indirectly represent the destructive forces of history, as seen in a fairly literal view of Mount Baker in From Here to Eternity, with its overall pink ground colour; or the enameled hues of the large Magenta Fire.Woods 2005, pp. 21, 27. As a consequence of witnessing injustice and cruelty, he had a penchant for painting flames.van Loon, Sheila; in Wang 2017. Hessay was an advocate of social justice and protecting the environment. His landscapes often contain signs or remains of human dwellings: forgotten logging camps, a prospector's shack, derelict habitations.Woods 2005, pp. 7, 9, 25. Many paintings demonstrate his love of nature, illustrated by Above the Yalakom, with its fluid design of trees and slopes.Woods 2005, p. 11. In 1967, he created a six by nine foot mural, a depiction of a waterfall cascading from a mountain lake, for the Langley Evangelical Free Church. In Woods' view, Hessay drew on his childhood learning steeped in the Bible, and the mural reinterprets Mount Lebanon, the Sea of Galilee, and the River Jordan in a Canadian context. His last painting, the peaceful landscape Break of Day, completed in 1977, is atypical among those of his final decade, with its use of soft harmonies and rounded contours.