Halfmoon Bay painter Sandy Kay says she had two intentions when she set out on her remarkable art adventure, A Tangled Web, which was inspired by a bog and its surroundings that lie along the main trail in Smuggler Cove Provincial Park. “It was partly to highlight this beautiful treasure on our Coast that so many people don’t know about. The second part is a deeper message, because for me, the wetland bog and the tangled web are metaphors for our lives.”
Kay was speaking at the July 13 opening reception for her multi-faceted solo exhibition at Gibsons Public Art Gallery (GPAG), which features 26 paintings, several pages of background information text by Roberts Creek writer Heather Conn, a mock-up of a forthcoming book on the painting series and its themes, a CD with tunes by four local musicians inspired by the paintings, and a five-minute online video about the project.
U.S.-born Kay, who has lived on the B.C. coast for 20 years, is emphatic in expressing the exhibit’s metaphorical and psychological aspects, which she said she will go into in depth in a talk at the gallery on Aug. 10.
“We live in tangled webs, some self-imposed, some not,” she said. “The parts that are self-imposed are our lack of confidence and self-esteem, our lack of discernment for what our true purpose is. Those are things we can deal with… we [can] recognize our own tangled webs and get through to the light again.”
That liberation is expressed in the largest painting in the show, a six-by-ten-foot piece called Emerge, featuring an open vista not seen in the other works. “This is what happens when you get through your tangled web and emerge on the other side,” Kay remarked on the piece.
Emerge, and the exhibit’s other paintings, in sizes ranging from one-by-three- to three-by-four feet, were all created in a layering method called Grisaille, a glazing technique in which translucent colours are laid over an under-painting done in greys, whites and blacks. The process took Kay between 30 and 60 hours for each work, depending on size. She will demonstrate the technique at the gallery on the afternoon of July 20.
The layering helps provide a rich depth to the paintings, most of which depict complex reflections on the bog, heavily criss-crossed with ripples, branches and vegetation – tangled webs. The colour palettes of the works vary widely, depending on the sky conditions and time of day of the scene.
The show is sure to help draw more people to the bog so they, too, can enjoy its beauty and perhaps reflect on their own imaginative impressions. Kay said ten per cent of the revenue from the show – which is already half sold – will be donated to Smuggler Cove Provincial Park. “You have to pay it back, right?” she said.
A Tangled Web is on at GPAG until Aug. 11.
