Opening Reception Friday Sept 16, 5-7 pm
Show continues to Oct 5
TRANSLATION by Cheryl Long and Nathalie St-Amant
This collection of paintings explores the stories that emerge from landscape.
Salt Spring Gallery of Fine Art, September 16-Oct 5. Opening Exhibition September 16, 5-7 p.m.
Cheryl Long:
The process of translation from perception of environment to its manifestation onto canvas is both mysterious and dynamic. I'm intrigued, especially, with finding the strength and simplicity of form in nature. The images I capture with my camera may be momentary, as in moving water, or wind-driven clouds, yet I strive to express the strength and sculptural qualities I see within these fleeting glimpses. I invite you on a journey of reverence and mystery with the voices of the landscape
as they share their hidden stories.
Living on Salt Spring Island, BC, Cheryl’s life as an artist includes Oil Painting, as well as writing and illustrating children’s books.
She draws inspiration from her travels across Canada, visiting and photographing our National Parks and wilderness areas.
Nathalie St-Amant:
Translating the grandiose beauty, wisdom and mysteries words could never express has been a deep yearning, a fantasy that needed to become tangible to soothe my soul, so much romance was otherwise to be contained.. Light and shadow, colour, movement and composition, the language of the Fabric of Life itself liberated me from the limiting world of the conscious mind. A place within I name’’Before Mind’’.
1988..last stop Tofino BC. I jumped off the bus, young and free, a few belongings and hungry for adventures, The next 10 years proved to be what the concept of that word could not encompass.
Some days, it was a ghost town with a few wandering natives and imported characters, artists, rednecks, hippies, fishermen, … All of us cradled in a womb of old growth and open ocean wilderness. My first plein air paintings painted in Clayoquot were to imprint me with a passion for this expressive process, influenced by a few mature artists of the area.The thick canope’s filtered morning sun slithering its rays on the old draft dodger's cabin, i woke haunted by the call to tackle yet another painting journey in the wild (sometimes hours of hiking or boat ride) and meet her at her finest edge.
2022, i grab the paintbrush, trembling in front of the Cathedral.. can i accomplish the mission? My left brain doubts relentlessly, I let go and let myself be the fool, jumping off the cliff of my mind and letting the dance of life move me, 32 years of work cheering me through, relieved to find myself part of Creation again.