It takes a second bout with cancer to make a person realize how precious is time.
"How much time do I have left?" asked Gibsons' artist Lenore Conacher. She was not being maudlin, but realistic. Her second recent confrontation with cancer and subsequent surgery inspired the theme of a new body of work to be shown at the Westwind Gallery, opening on Oct. 28 and running for two weeks.
The theme is time, and each of the abstract acrylics has time in the title. It's not only about her life span. It's also about the time spent waiting - for MRIs, for doctor's appointments, for surgery - and about using that precious time when health is fragile.The surgery was successful; they got it all. But Conacher was home sick in March of this year after being released from the hospital. She had been asked to do a new exhibit of her work for Morley Baker at the Westwind Gallery but didn't think she could find the energy.
"When facing cancer, my creative juices just dry up," she says. "I was stuck in fear mode." But Baker encouraged her. "I just had to push on through," Baker said.
The result is, as Conacher notes, a series of paintings that look as if six different artists painted them. The first two works painted at the end of April are perhaps the darkest and most complex, using tissue paper collage with paint to create texture, but they both display the characteristic Conacher colour palette. The next works are more colourful. Time Flies depicts an agitated ocean wave in shades of blue with contrasting textures. "I like drama," she says. Good Times, one of Conacher's favourites that was painted as she started to feel healthier, is light-hearted, appearing in yellow, bright orange and flesh tones, like mandarin oranges and nectarines.
Conacher first dabbled at painting as a kid, until a friend passed comment on one of her paintings, a colourful, green rendition of Stanley Park, telling Conacher it looked like an explosion in a broccoli factory. She put away her paints at that moment and chose another career; she ran a personnel agency in Vancouver for many years, not picking up the brushes again until she had retired and moved to the Coast in 1993. It was the first bout with cancer that gave her an epiphany moment and resurrected a 30-year-old urge to paint. She took watercolour classes and painted florals until she became bored with them.
Then, as one of the founders and organizers of the Gibsons School of the Arts, she attended the annual summer workshops taught by instructors from all over North America. Her work changed into acrylic ink impressionistic abstracts using bold colours and designs.
You won't see anything ugly or angst-ridden among her abstracts. Conacher says that we are so assaulted with horrible images every day of our lives, the horrors of war or accidents that come to us through TV, that those who have a skill to make art have a responsibility to create beauty to counteract those images.
"Something upbeat, cheerful, comforting to the spirit It's not to shut out all the bad stuff, it's that we need some compensation, some balance," said Conacher.
Conacher also teaches acrylics to adults at Capilano College and her work can be seen frequently at The Landing Gallery in Gibsons where she is a volunteer manager.
The Time show by Lenore Conacher opens on Oct. 28 with a reception from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Westwind Gallery, upstairs at 292 Gower Point Rd.
