Soul to Surface is the title of an exhibition from Coast artists Ginny Vail of Gibsons and Leif Kristian Freed of Sechelt – coming to the Arts Centre’s gallery on Feb. 10. It’s a title they came up with together and it’s more easily understood when examining the abstract nature of their work.
“We played with words,” said Freed. “We don’t paint what we see, it’s our inner memories coming out – what we feel about painting, what we feel about art. My experience at life is emerging in abstraction.”
Freed has a background in commercial art studied in Helsinki, Finland in the 1960s, though he has always tried other varying styles. These days his newer work moves through the abstract to a place where the viewer catches glimpses of the figurative: a face emerging from coloured shapes, a sailboat among the geometric triangles, a castle turret floating. Generally abstract artists don’t like it when the viewer “sees” objects or faces within the painting, but Freed acknowledges that we all tend to do it.
In Freed’s work there are echoes of Klimt – an artist that he admires – yet they are truly his own images, his tales of life’s journey. Freed left Finland when Europe was in a recession and he held a number of jobs in Canada: at a sawmill up north, as an ad manager, as stage designer for artists, building sets at Expo 86, and as an electric sign shop owner in Vancouver before he moved to the Sunshine Coast. With his roving time behind him by 2000 he began to paint seriously, drawing on his background from his musical, artistic family. This will be his first big show on the Coast, though he has participated in group shows in Alberta.
The two artists met for the first time to plan their show, and Vail is excited by the prospect. “It’s a fantastic thing to be showing with this fellow,” she said. They both have a basic design instinct on a professional level.
Vail is not new to art, but she is new to this format. Most of us know her as the owner of a store in Gibsons, the Swallow’s Nest, now closed, where she had an eye for the purchase of lovely hand-crafted and vintage items that she displayed and sold. The store always had a corner dedicated to her art or to a showing from local artists. Some of Vail’s colourful paintings on canvas will be on display at the Arts Centre, but her latest work is the highlight. All last year she immersed herself in her art, honed her painting skills in a class with Todd Clark and later with Nicholas Wilton. There she learned more about the kind of painting that she is now creating: mixed media. It’s intuitive – nothing is planned out; each previous decision informs the next.
“It feels more like designing,” she notes, and it draws on her artistic background. Vail graduated from Langara’s art program then studied at the Arts Center College of Design in Los Angeles. Her career was in graphic design for the advertising business.
The medium is paper, some of it century-old papers collected while travelling, documents, handwritten notes, postcards, magazine pages, posters, especially if they are weathered, and even a Japanese stencil found at a flea market. She places the typography then uses paint and a squeegee and scrapes and scratches. Most pieces are abstract though some involve faces, perhaps taken from a poster.
There’s no deep hidden message. “It’s elevating the ordinary,” she points out, “making it look beautiful.”
The opening night reception at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre, 5714 Medusa, Sechelt, is on Wednesday, Feb. 10 from 7 to 9 p.m. For further information see the website at www.sunshinecoastartscouncil.com
