Tracing the work of Takao Tanabe over many decades, it is possible to see fluctuations between an abstract and realist approach to landscape. Experimenting with colour and form, he studied in Winnipeg under the painter Joe Plaskett, producing lyrically abstracted, landscape-based works. Tanabe and many of his peers, including Gordon Smith and Jack Shadbolt have used the landscape as a source for abstraction, using expansive views as departures for formal exploration. During the 1970s Tanabe turned away from abstraction, choosing to render the sweeping Prairies, Rocky Mountains and coastline of Canada with keen attention to scale and detail. A period of regular travel including flights and long drives between British Columbia and Alberta marked this transition from the abstract to the real.