Ten years since their last collaborative exhibition, painter Donna Balma and mixed media artist Francine Desjardins reunite for an exhibition titled Persistence of Shapes at the Doris Crowston Gallery in the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre from March 7 to April 1. The exhibition title is the result of both artists realizing that they were returning again and again to certain shapes.
Donna Balma’s visionary art has been described as “obsessive, symbolic, forceful, colourful and often comic.” She explores her life experience through creating art, delving into the rare space that connects the extreme subjective and the universal. Balma credits her memory of a visit to Thunderbird Park in Victoria at the age of nine or 10 as strongly informing this series of art work. The “structures, totem poles and indigenous paintings in bright, bold saturated colours affected me deeply,” she said.
She doesn’t try to recreate what she sees or attempt to tell someone else’s story. Instead she has allowed the visual lexicon of her life’s experience to influence her exploration of colour, shape and imagery.
Originally from Montreal, Francine Desjardins now spends her time between the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver. As of late her work has moved from figurative painting and she now focuses almost exclusively on painting non-representational abstract work. Desjardins states: “A discovered shape may capture my interest and the work evolves.” She works on the interplay of “line, shape, shapes within shapes, texture and colour” until her sense of balance and composition is satisfied. “In this process of exploration and discovery … there develops a sort of dialogue with the painting as the image emerges.”
Recently she has been “preoccupied with recycling canvases, painting over works … primarily studies of the human figure, and using them or reusing them, as a point of departure towards their abstraction.”
The opening reception for Persistence of Shapes will be held Sunday, March 11 from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Arts Centre. Both artists will be on hand a week later, Sunday, March 18 at 1 p.m. at the gallery to talk about their work. For more information visit: www.sunshinecoastartscouncil.com
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