It’s a veritable feast of artwork.
About 90 entries in this year’s Friends of the Gallery (FOG) show at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt make for some very full walls and hours of viewing.
The meat and potatoes still resides in painting, particularly landscapes, but there are some interesting side dishes in digital art and a few imaginative desserts.
Members of the Sunshine Coast Arts Council are invited to bring in one piece created over the past year that presumably they are proud of — it’s not necessarily the same piece that a jury might select, which is what makes it interesting.
Coast artists are clearly inspired by nature. Forest scenes abound.
Stanley Funk depicts the luxuriant growth of our woods in Todd’s Shack, while June Malaka, as always, captures nature in a woodland trail. Kevin McEvoy’s Trout Lake in October renders the essence of the woodlands in acrylic. Rory Hooper-McEvoy has photographed a nature scene of stunning beauty, with what appears to be some digital manipulation. Roy Peters’ The Dragon’s Breath depicts that place where wind-twisted tree meets beach. Brett Varney uses oil, pastel and metallic leaf to depict Afternoon Grove.
The FOG show tends to draw in professionals whose work rubs frames with emerging artists.
The distinguished artist R.B. Wainwright shows his Magnetic Impulse, a lino cut/chine colle. Maurice Spira’s piece, Iron Rations, is explicit in its exposure of the male apparatus — it has a certain dynamism that marks Spira as a talent.
Paul Clancy’s inkjet photo, Huntington Beach, reveals his stellar photographer’s eye, and Anna Banana’s Artist at Work is an introspective, tongue-in-cheek delight.
Not much three dimensional art is on display, with a few exceptions: Alanna Wood’s mixed media fabric dolls and Tam Harrington’s interesting play on the words prayer/pear/pair. She has crafted a small shrine that features a brass pear surrounded by coupling Kama Sutra figures. Elaine Futterman has fashioned tactile pottery stones, while Betty Pehme’s mosaic, Oracle, is huge and striking.
What painters choose for their subjects is fascinating. A still life doesn’t have to be a bowl of fruit; it can be dairy cans and coal scuttles as in Edward Cleave’s water colour, At Rest. Sheila Page portrays timber in its first stages of becoming firewood — you can practically smell the resin.
If asked for my favourite of the show, I would hesitate. It’s a difficult choice. Elaine Hunter with her dreamscape photographs always blows me away; her submission titled Canada Road to Sky is shining and golden. Simon Haiduk has produced a digital painting, Spirit Bear, that is eye dazzling in a swirl of psychedelic colours. Jen Drysdale’s oil painting Fire Sky II is rendered in simple brushstrokes, yet it tells a complex story. Marilyn Marshall’s Three Readers is a compelling depiction of a trio of women grouped closely and awkwardly, each reading from a separate page. Nena Braathen’s etching, Fish Night, features a sad, tired fish that makes the viewer want to tickle it under the chin.
These were certainly highlights for me, but overall the image that lingers is that of Donna Balma’s oil painting Girl Plus Dog that breathes personality. The subjects appear puzzled, as if they haven’t yet discovered why they are being immortalized in paint.
The FOG show is on until Feb. 8. The Arts Centre is located at the corner of Trail Avenue and Medusa Street in Sechelt, and is open Wednesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m.
