A downtown Gibsons gallery has re-opened its doors under new ownership, launching a refreshed identity with a showcase of paintings by a self-taught interpreter of Sunshine Coast landscapes.
Monica Ardiel acquired the Silver Moon Gallery last November in a deal that included the facility’s Epson SureColor large-format printer. She traveled to the Lower Mainland to learn the unit’s high-tech mechanics. She rebranded the gallery by adding the words “fine art printery” to its name, hoping to attract artists eager to produce Giclée digital art prints.
She didn’t wait long. Artist Craig Schneider — who paints acrylics under the name Trail Bay Craig — walked in the door, carrying doughnuts. The gallery’s first exhibition was set.
A call from Linda Williams of the Coast Cultural Alliance followed, urging Ardiel to enlist in the Purple Banner Tour of local studios.
Schneider’s first solo show on the Coast opened with a high-spirited reception on May 5.
The gallery’s resident artist, Levi Purjue, also attended the event. Purjue will continue to exhibit and sell his works at Silver Moon. He was one of the three founding artists when the storefront space originally opened in October 2019.
Meanwhile, the reformatted space will provide a launchpad for Schneider’s commercial art sales. It’s been a fast-paced journey for someone who only reignited his high school passion for painting during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I didn’t pick up a paint brush or a pen until around 2020,” said Schneider. “That’s when I officially sort of moved up here from Vancouver. My mind was to come here on vacations and have a summer home, but it just flipped and turned and I said, I’m retiring and moving to the Coast. It’s the best move I ever made, really.”
Schneider’s landscapes range from highly stylized images of natural settings (as in the intermingled branches of five birch trees writhing next to a placid sea, Graysale) to elemental renderings like jet-black trunks and their reflections in The Trails. His artistic vision is delineated by latticeworks in the foreground — foliage, cherry blossoms, branches with anthropomorphic ovoids — that open into rich-hued panoramas.
The mountains, surf and forests he sights from his Trail Bay home are abstracted into a variety of potent geometric patterns: outstretched tree limbs become icy shards in Spring Melt, or pointillist daubs in Emerald Mosaic.
“I like lighting and structure,” said Schneider. “I don’t refer to any visual aids like tracing when I’m painting. It’s me in the garage with the music pumping. I think having that freedom is super important as an artist because you can just go free. And little slip-ups now and then make it better. You can’t get any better without making mistakes. That’s my mantra: just let ‘er rip and have a good time doing it.”
For Ardiel, the idea of supporting local artists drove her decision to acquire Silver Moon. She offers a discount for Coast-based creatives producing large-format prints.
“I was a photographer,” she said. “So I think even the small part that I play by printing or varnishing canvases is a way of contributing to the art. It’s been a major learning curve but I love the people, I love my neighbours, and I want this to be successful.”
The newly-redesigned website of Silver Moon Gallery and Fine Art Printery is available by browsing to silvermoongallery.ca. Samples of Scheider’s acrylics are available online at his website: trailbaycraig.com.
