First, they were called the St. Bart's Artists, meeting to paint at the church of the same name in Gibsons. During construction, they moved to a smaller location, then to the lower floor of the Yacht Club where they enjoyed many annual shows until the building was sold last year. The 16-year-old group now meets every Wednesday at the Eric Cardinall Hall to paint, encourage one another, learn and practise life-drawing exercises. For their 15th annual show and sale June 24 to 26, the group of painters moves once more to the building next to the Gibsons Public Library. They've left their St. Bart's roots behind (another group, the Thursday artists, now paints at St. Bart's) and it was time to change the name to the more appropriate Roving Artists. Five of its original eight members are still painting together: Mary Burgess, Joan Crabtree, Pat Drummond, Julie Skippon and Peggy Small.
About 15 members of the group will show a variety of work in watercolour, oil and acrylic.
Show organizer Walter Smith will be showing six of his pieces. After developing an allergic sensitivity to the heavy metal in paints, Smith decided to switch to technical pen and ink drawing to create the little seen art form of pointillism. The work is very detailed and time consuming. It consists of a series of dots less than one quarter of a millimetre in size that merge into a consistent whole in the viewer's eye. Smith's six pieces are in both black and white and colour. The majority of Roving Artists have packed quite a few years of painting experience into their art. Pat Drummond will bring her florals and Barbara Bradshaw her landscapes. Other involved artists are Vivian Chamberlin, Monica Robb and Tom Fraser, who has recently shown with three other artists at Foursight, at the Seaside Centre in Sechelt. Several of the artists also show at other galleries or are involved with arts associations such as the summer intensive art classes mounted by the Gibsons School of the Arts. The show and sale runs this weekend from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday in the Family Place building, 464 South Fletcher in Gibsons.
