We look forward to welcoming you back March 1, with a new, refreshed interior, a new member and a new show starting March 2!
End of Season Show and News
We are excited to share with you a dynamic collection of works-in-progress ("WIPs") by gallery members. Come see what goes into the artist's creative and technical thought processes as they search out new directions in their practice, and refine well-trodden routes. Cheryl Long's fluid shapes (don't touch, they're still wet!) morph from representational to abstract and back again in her developing landscapes. Nathalie St-Amant's fantastical Freaks of Nature dance through sketches and colours and abstracts. Olga Szkabarnicki's monumental dance-inspired figures take shape on giant rolls of newsprint, in various iterations of charcoal, inks, and gesso.
It's like a mini studio tour.
This "in progress" show - ever changing - is on until December 17, our last day of the season before we take our annual winter break until March 1.
The gallery is filled with works in a variety of sizes and price points, perfect for the giving season. Included are miniatures and large scale oil paintings by Naomi Grindlay, as well as a sparkling selection of one-of-a-kind wearable woven beaded pieces by Carol Newmeyer.
Until December 17, all financial contributions received in our Donations box will be collected and donated to our local Food Bank.
Don't forget to check out (and vote for!) our special Christmas-themed window display: kids of all ages love it!
Hope to see you before we head off into a wintry retreat of contemplation and artistic rejuvenation.
Gallery open Wed - Sat, 11-4pm.
Gallery closed December 18/22 - Feb 28/23
I SEE YOU PAUL CROUCH
WHO IS PAUL CROUCH?
I never met Paul Crouch.
He was in full-time care, his life altered by Parkinson’s disease and dementia when his wife Karen and I became friends.
In her years of grief after his death, Karen did not talk a lot about Paul, so I know few details of the man himself. I am told he was a rather quiet and gentle soul. Loved cats and kayaking and old cars. He had a long career as an award winning commercial photographer in Toronto and he and Karen spent summers driving around the Maritimes buying Folk Art. He restored vintage Jaguars and he collected all manner of interesting objects and antiques.
Oh, and he drew.
And painted.
And carved and fabricated and doodled and sketched and never stopped creating until the day he died.
Our society wants us to sum up a life with a list of places lived, jobs and titles earned. But I got to know Paul through his art, so that is how I invite you to know him too. Might I suggest it may be a richer and more intimate view into his person…
When Karen died rather suddenly earlier this year, I learned she had left me all of Paul’s work. To honour my dear friend and to celebrate Paul’s exceptional creative mind I approached the Salt Spring Gallery about holding a show.
There are large paintings from an Abstract Expressionist phase painted between 1959 and 1962.
A collection of colourful wood sculptures made on Salt Spring and shown in Toronto at Prime Gallery in the mid-80’s.
A series of Lithographs of curious figures and an uncountable number of fantastical drawings… Rendered in pen and ink, oil pastel, pencil, anything he could make a mark with. Paul’s imagination and creative output was remarkable and he did it not for fame or fortune but it seems because it was who he was.
I invite you to come see Paul Crouch with me.
You will be amazed.
Nadine Buckinger
Paul Russell Crouch
April 6, 1932 - December 31, 2016
Karen Anne Gray
July 15,1951 - March 16, 2022
New Works Boro and Bryans
New Work
Upon agreeing to collaborate in August, both Sav Boro and Paul Bryans have created all new art work for their show together. This has been inspiring for both, after twenty plus years of being associated in the Salt Spring Island community.
Paul has brought yet another unique style to his island landscapes. He has layered both techniques and perspectives, integrating aspects of the expressionist, abstract and surreal work he has produced throughout the past four and a half decades.
Sav will be exhibiting his eight foot elephant which he has continued to work on since he lost most of his paintings in a fire last May. He is also focusing on creating new island landscapes in pen and wash. This is a full circle for him as pen and wash are the mediums he began his art career with in 1981.
New Work by Sav Boro and Paul Bryans is truly about trusting new beginnings!
Watermark
~ A Show And Sale of Recent prints and ceramics by SSI Printmakers and SSI Potters guild.
TRANSLATION- Paintings by Nathalie St. amant & Cheryl Long
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.
Bedsheets & Recurring Dreams: Monumental Dance Portraits by Olga Szkabarnicki
August 26 - September 14, 2022
Opening Reception: August 26, 5 - 7pm
Show closes: September 14, 3pm
Summary Artist Statement
It’s those images one obsesses about in the wee hours of the night. In the liminal time between sleep and wakefulness. For me, it’s bodies in motion. Expressive movement. Twirling swirling rising tumbling breathing sweating thrashing relaxing. The dance of life, captured in stillness.
I am a life-long student of figure drawing. While I may be known for my pen and ink Dancer Drawings, this is my first show of life-sized mixed-media work inspired by expressive dance movement.
The figures are rendered on Mylar, a translucent, durable surface. The artworks are suspended, unattached, over fabrics in a scroll-like fashion. This allows colour and light to show through the artwork, with interesting optical effects. The overall mood is dreamy, and changeable. The lengthy fabrics pool below the figures like bed linens on the floor on a hot summer night.
Working in a monumental size presents its own challenges, both technical (achieving a credible rendering) and physical (not falling off the ladder when stepping back to see what I’m doing). I get very close and physical when mark making, my hands and fingerprints all over the bodies I’m creating, exploring their expression, smoothing it across the Mylar, scratching it into the surface - trying to feel it - and melding it with my own expression. This dizzying dance of becoming plays mind games with me. I feel it.
I want the viewer to feel it, too.
