Paintings by a self-taught student of West Coast landscapes radiate with supernal luminescence in a new exhibition at the Gumboot Café in Roberts Creek.
Acrylic works by Tina Flux, whose zeal for art was originally whetted at Chatelech Secondary School, are featured in a month-long showcase of Flux’s nature studies.
The majority of her canvases — as in the richly coloured Gibsons Marina — are anchored by a tree or a clutch of evergreens, often with branches silhouetted against an ethereal sky.
“It’s literally the positive and negative space of the tree and the shapes of it,” explained Flux. “With the silhouette and the darks and the lights in the tree, they have so much personality, like a human.” During road trips, she frequently asks her husband to stop the car so she can photograph a striking conifer, preserving its memory for later interpretation in the studio.
“That’s a common theme in our car,” she laughed. “So sometimes it’s better if I drive. Then I can pull over whenever I please.”
Despite twin passions for art and chemistry while in high school, Flux pursued university studies in linguistics and speech science. She worked in South Korea, teaching English. She later laboured among the monochromatic strictures of a law firm’s I.T. department. After living in Calgary for seven years, she brought her Ontario-born fiancé to meet her parents on the Sunshine Coast.
“He fell in love with it here,” she recalled. “He couldn’t believe the scenery. That’s when we decided: we’re going to move back.”
Now based in Gibsons, Flux has been painting professionally since 2009. Five years ago, she became part of a juried art rental program in North Vancouver. This spring, she joined fellow painters Kandice Keith and Keely Halward for a one-day show at Keith’s Roberts Creek studio.
“I’m so grateful for those two,” said Flux, “because creating art is a fairly lonely process where you’re alone all the time. It’s nice to have the support. Some days you just wonder what the heck you’re doing.”
Both Keith and Halward have previously exhibited at the Gumboot Café. The restaurant’s owners contacted Flux after last year’s Art Crawl and invited her to showcase her work on the premises.
The geometries in Flux’s paintings vary according to the firmaments they represent. In Everything the Light Touches, sharply outlined driftwood logs are strewn at oblique angles across the foreshore. Light reflects in exacting zig-zags across the waves. Above, however, sunshine streams in a cohesive shaft, diffusing treetops into a blushing blaze.
In other works, like Autumn Sunshine, criss-crossed branches themselves seem imbued with brilliant light.
“Normally when you think about a painting, you do the background first and then you stick your foreground in the front,” said Flux. “But I like to almost paint backwards and start with the foreground, then go on to the sky. Because then you can really cut in the shapes of trees with the colour of the sky.”
One of Flux’s works — The Present Moment, a harmony of broad-daubed evergreens and granite hillsides — was quickly purchased by visitors to the Gumboot Café. Its philosophical title, she said, is typical of the serene significance she sees in her landscapes.
“Sometimes,” she said, “I title them with a message that I myself need to hear.”
Tina Flux’s landscapes remain on display at the Gumboot Café in Roberts Creek until July 31. Flux maintains an online portfolio at tinaflux.com.
