Four Corners

Four Corners

The Back Room Show for August (2008) features four artists in at least as many different media. They have not exactly each claimed a corner, but each artist has definitely staked out her own territory. The beauty of the world, the "richness of our surroundings" inspires each artist.

Lona Munck's gentle watercolour, oil, and acrylic landscapes set a serene mood in the natural world. The delicate touch and calm muted colours are very appealing. The local, upper Fraser Valley, Agassiz/Harrison Lake scenes, including varied landscapes such as alpine, waterfalls, forest, glacier, river, fireweed, help celebrate the local. "My goal is to share with you, my joy in color, line, form, shape, and design." she says on her website www.freewebs.con/lonasviews

Diane MacKenzie's paintings are, for the most part, larger, which helps them capture viewer attention in an eclectic collection. The feature pastoral of contented dairy cows under a shady tree carries on the celebration of the local. A photograph from the 1950's of two "rebels without a cause", complete with cigarettes, undershirts, blue jeans, and old car, almost presents a lesson in creating art from life. The artist has transformed the photograph into a graphite wash sketch and into an enlarged sepia-toned watercolour, both very effective. Other subjects lean more towards farmyard and garden. Her roses are so convincing you feel as if you can smell them.

Anna Johnstad-Moller's photographs offer another way of looking. Two large iconic images, one of a Swedish thatch-roofed house, another of a white-painted church, emphasize how important is choice of subject to a photographer's goals. And an interesting collection of beach shots, from fly fisherman to close-ups of kelp and bubbles of vegetation, reminds us of how the camera both directs us and helps us to see. AJ-M also displays pine needle baskets and woven sage incense, and some beautiful postcards of her photographs.

Finally, Diane Ferguson's raku is breath-taking. Occupying the corner opposite the entrance, it sucks you right in, down on your knees, to look. Too slow, when I went back to photograph the large Chihuly-inspired bowls, they were already gone. One was dark with royal blue interior; the second was the iridescent copper I associate more with raku. Together they forced the viewer into a dilemma--how can one possibly choose one over the other? The large swimming fish sculptures are also very appealing, colourful, humourous, oozing character, personality. My flash only helped heighten the subtlety of colour and texture.

Any one of these artists could shoulder a show of her own. Together, they offer an almost over-whelming potpourri of beautiful creations which inhabit the Back Room at the Hope Arts Gallery in Hope, BC until August 29, 2008.

Canyons of Glass

the purple cow i never saw
wandered concrete canyons of glass
gazed at Landscape Spirits in awe
gave the boulder pool a pass

In rivers the water you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes. So with time present. -- Leonardo da Vinci

Rural Life

Rural Life

As Ian Tyson says of Charlie Russell, "get her all down before she goes . . . you gotta get her all down cause she's bound to go." A similar sense of urgency underlies Linda Bishop's two dozen paintings in the new Back Room Show. The Rural Life--A Collection of Original Oils Depicting Life in the Country focuses on the creatures with which we live--chickens, sheep, cattle, and horses. There are no barns or factory farms for these animals. They live in a green world where you can see the swish of a long graceful tail, hear the bawl of a protesting cow, the scratch of chickens dancing, the jangle of harness. The cattle portraits especially, groups in a pasture or jostling for winter feed, individuals scratching on a favourite tree or resting in the shade, capture "personality", a "knowing" intelligence, curiosity, the uniqueness of individuals, the way in which they watch us as carefully as we watch them. One Bossie stretches into a welcome scratch behind the ears from a trusted friend who is the only human figure in the show. There are also several landscapes--waterlilies on a creek, a slough, a rippled stream in spring edged with red osier, a mauve sunset. And there is one grouping of still lifes, various arrangements of pieces from a gold-trimmed Blue Mikado-pattern tea set--cups and saucers, creamer, sugar tray and tongs, tea pot, a crumpled table cloth, warm sunlight.

What is the link between an antique tea service, an object not necessarily limited to rural settings, and the cattle, horses, sheep, and chickens in Bishop's countryside? Perhaps it is the celebration of a fragile threatened existence. The joy in hard work and simple pleasures. Taking notice and taking care. Enjoying the beauty in nature and man-made objects. Nurturing. Humour. Respect for each other and for the animate world in which we are set. Respect for tradition. For traditions we inherit. Traditions, like the tea set, like the passion for country living. Values which we inherit from earlier generations, which we choose to inform our lives, when we choose to move to the country, to remain rural, in spite of encroaching development, the houses, golf courses, people crowding agricultural land. These paintings portray things we return to again and again as an antidote to the rush and noise of modern life. Things which give meaning to existence, purpose beyond our self-centred anxieties.

Linda Bishop's paintings of rural beauty inspire thoughts and feelings; they will be in the Back Room of the Hope Arts Gallery until the end of July (2008). Catch them before they go.

The Purple Cow

The Purple Cow

My project for this first summery weekend -- transforming the old cow. The blotchy lighting hides wrinkles and peeling underpaint. Co-Bossy greets visitors and subtly encourages them to use the handrails. She is an homage to a rural heritage, and an allusion to my first favourite poem--Gelett Burgess' "The Purple Cow": "I never saw a purple cow, / I never hope to see one. / But this I will say anyhow / I'd rather see than be one."

Earth Chi Show

Earth Chi

Earth Chi -- Photographer's Vision

In photography, as in life, I try to focus on what is here and not to fuss about what is not. The content of my images is all-important --subject, composition, colour, line, light, space, relationships, pattern, repetition, icons, process, concept, emotion, evocation. The camera is a simple tool helping me see; I haven't yet moved into the technology of lens or f-stops or computer tweaking. The art, I hope, is in the seeing. Every shot aims to celebrate the beauty in which we live, the beauty that is the CHI, the life force, coming and going. In the everyday, in natural abstractions, Chi assumes many forms and reveals itself in many ways. Rumi says: "The beauty you craved in things was always my glimmer seen through a veil. Turn around and see where beauty comes from!"
IN those in-between spaces, places where one realm--earth, water, fire, air--meets another, Chi is the link, the connection. Where elements meet and mix, Chi is the hovering fog, emerging mist, rushing water, swirling cloud.
Vancouver Reveal
Yellowstone Pool
Kettle River Snag
IN rock abraded, canyons carved by water, Chi is Dylan Thomas' "force that drives the water through the rocks"; it is Neil Young's " . . . ancient river bending / Down the timeless gorge of changes."
Coquihalla Canyon
Coquihalla Wall - Turquoise Water
IN the soft curve of lines--valleys "the moon could roll in", roadbeds copying the contours, ripple marks scribing the ebb and flow--Chi is the movement, the spiral, the gyre of the life force traced on the Earth's skin.
English Bay Ripple Marks
Anarchist Lookout
IN the lines marking growth, Chi manifests as energy transformed into matter. As the Elders say, "Everything on the Earth is of the Earth."
Tree Fungus - Up Silver-Skagit Road
IN the beauty of blossoms reaching from Earth's darkness towards the sun, Chi is Dylan Thomas' "force that through the green fuse drives the flower." As Neil Young said of rows, "Just another line / In the field of time."
Wild Bleeding Hearts - Up Silver-Skagit Road
Tree Peony - Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden
Tulip Fields - Seabird Island, Agassiz
IN energy, fire, sun, light, and the colours light shatters into, Chi is. Photography is writing with light, fixing the Chi on to paper.
Red Maples 1 & 2 - Hope Friendship Garden
Blue Plum Bloom
IN the spark of curiosity, interest, intelligence, love, Chi is the life energy, that force flowing through all things seeking to connect.
Quinn
Julie
IN the nominative tags and narrative lines by which we mark our places and tell our stories, Chi is the creative energy, the imagination we use to calm our anxiety, to attach ourselves to the planet.
Salish (Siwash) Rock
Flood Falls
IN the spirit within, which we seek, Chi is the transformer, offering new life in a new form. In Leonard Cohen's words: "There's a blaze of light / In every word / it doesn't matter which you heard / The holy or the broken Hallelujah."
3 Old Churches--Yale Museum, Portage la Prairie Museum, and an Apiary on the Back Road to Bridesville.
IN the beauty of decomposition, the eternal chipping away, in the drying up, the withdrawing of green, the sagging ruins, Chi is the suck as the life force departs.
Cracks with Grass - Cheam Pit
Yellow Leaves - Old Yale Road Dead End
Landstrom Ridge Cabin
Stonehenge
Compositions in Rust 1 & 2 - On the Beach at Yale
IN the dead tree, the rock being eaten, Chi is the suck as new life nurses; "the leaf is mother to the tree".
Nurse Log with Fungus and Fern - Up Silver-Skagit Road
Moss Eating Rock, Cactus Flowering - On the Ranch, Kettle Valley
Lilacs, Family Cemetery - Kettle Valley
IN the blood in our bodies, the oxygen pumped, Chi is the pulse of the Earth.
IN the air in our lungs, in songs that are sung, Chi is the breath of the planet.

East to West Travels

East to West Travels: a Review

An abundance of Lora Armbruster paintings in oil and acrylics fill the Back Room at the Hope Arts Gallery. From miniatures a few centimetres in dimension to almost picture-window size (with a price range to match, from $20-something to $1200), these scenes express a passion for travel and a love of Canadian landscape. They move from Annapolis to Niagara Falls, through abandoned prairie homesteads, Alberta Hoo Doos, to fallen rainforest totems and west coast lighthouses, interspersed with scenes at a beach, boat rentals on a lake, a lazy morning river, and colourful flora and fauna--hydrangeas, larkspur, tomatoes, red peony, cow parsnip, orchid, mixed bouquets, a magnificent owl, hens, a herd of powerful buffalo, and watchful antelope alert amongst the hay bales.

Armbruster identifies one of her goals as "using harmonious colour to communicate something to the viewer--feelings, memories, and more." Some of the paintings go beyond representations of nature's beauty, becoming wise commentaries upon the passage of time, the importance of memory and nostalgia. In 'All in Passing" a grandfather and grandson watch an old train slide by a row of elevators. An abandoned house almost disappears into a magnificent sunset in the same way that fallen totems sink into the "Land of Spirits".

At the well-attended opening May 4, Lora was introduced as: "She came to BC for the Commonwealth Games in 1954 and never went home." Audience reactions, ranging from envy to inspiration, is best summarized in another' painter's succinct comment: "Wow!"

East to West Travels stop in the Back Room at the Hope Arts Gallery, Hope, BC, from May 1 to May 28, 2008.