The Gwen Fox Gallery’s Large Scale Art Show’s return has been hugely anticipated since it first took place last year.
“The gallery never looks as good as it does with all large paintings. It just fits better because it’s a big space. This is a good-sized gallery, so when you put big pieces in it, it looks really good,” said Gwen Fox Gallery Volunteer Coordinator Brenda Hedberg.
She explained that for people who didn’t attend last year’s large scale art show, this show is one where all of the pieces, not counting art on plinths, are 40 inches in one dimension. The gallery also opens this show to all member artists, so there is work from 37 different Manitoba artists on display.
“We have everything here. We have photography that’s at least 40 inches. We have a beaded piece that’s more than 40 inches. We have lots of paintings of every kind. We have triptychs that we have several of them that combine make more than 40 inches,” said Hedberg.
The gallery is hosting an artists’ reception that residents are welcome to attend on Feb. 7 from 1 to 3 p.m. The Large Scale Art Show itself is taking place from Feb. 3 to 27, is free to attend, and opening hours for the gallery are Tuesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m., with opening hours going late until 8 p.m. on Thursdays.
Hedberg hopes to see you there.
“If you want to see a beautiful gallery full of beautiful, large art, come and see this show,” she said.
The Selkirk Record couldn’t feature all 37 artists in the gallery this month, but did speak to three who shared the inspiration behind their work.
Sue E. Cowan
Cowan is a Sidney, Man. artist who works in a variety of mediums. This month, you can see a representation of her vibrant use of colour at the gallery.
She started with oils, and then life circumstances made it so that acrylic paints were more practical, however, she’s gotten back into oil paints and has even expanded into pastels.
The piece that she’s sharing this month is After the Last Cut and depicts a road with round bales and a beautiful prairie sky.
“We’ve always lived in the rural settings, and I’d see all these lovely farms. This one isn’t an exact place. It just was in my mind. I worked it out compositionally so that it would lead the eye in,” she said.
She wanted to create a place that pretty much anyone who has lived rurally in the prairies is familiar with.
“I wanted it to evoke a feeling of home, a familiar place that people have been,” Cowan explained.
She says that the inspiration for the art that she creates comes from the world around her. For example, the piece she made for this show came from an early morning.
“I got up early one morning, and I looked out the window, and everything was just this lovely rosy colour. So, I went outside with my coffee, and I was wandering around, and there were hay bales, and they were, it’s such a hard colour to even describe. They just looked rosy because the sun was just coming up, and everything was this pinkish sort of colour. I just loved it,” said Cowan.
She said that she first started creating art in childhood.
“I had a kind of a tough childhood, and so that was my escape. I liked to sketch. I would spend lots of time just sketching, and that was the one thing that people would be nice to me about, so I felt comfortable doing it,” she said.
She put a pause on her artistic side when raising her family, but came back to it when she started to have more time.
“I started doing little decorative painting, because I always had to be a little bit creative. And it kind of, then it went from there,” said Cowan.
She decided to take part in the Gwen Fox Gallery despite living a ways away, thanks to her sister-in-law, who lives nearby and the welcoming volunteers who made her feel at home.
“Everybody seemed very warm and friendly when I came in. I really like the atmosphere here,” she said.
She explained that she feels that anyone could come to the gallery and feel welcome to spend time looking at art.
Cowan hopes that residents take some time to stop by this month’s show.
Jim Duncan
Jim Duncan
Duncan is a painter. His art is inspired by nature, and he enjoys painting landscapes.
Though he has dabbled in oil a little, his work is mostly acrylic paintings.
The piece that he’s sharing this month is Carden Cove Lake Superior.
“It was a favourite spot of ours. We discovered it years ago (when) we were camping across Eastern Canada, and we came across this town, Marathon, on the north shore of Lake Superior. We wanted to camp somewhere, but we like to do what we call stealth camping, or boondocking. Some people call it,” he said.
After following a road down to a place called Carden Cove, they found the spot he painted.
“The first time we got there, the rain had just stopped, the sun came out, and the colours and brightness and everything was just beautiful. And so, we took a number of photographs, and the painting is based on one of the photographs,” said Duncan.
His art journey did include doing some work as a child, but it really began its upswing after his retirement in 2018, when he signed up for art classes in Teulon.
He’s been part of that group for some time, but his journey into the Selkirk art scene was inspired by his wife, who has been an artist for longer than he has, and wanted to check out the Gwen Fox Gallery.
“She was aware of it, and so we came here to see some of the art exhibits. And, in the course of visiting, we talked to Brenda Hedberg, who told us more about the gallery, and that got us interested. So, we signed up to become members,” he said.
From there, he learned about the Gordon Howard Centre’s art classes with instructor Patricia Johnson, and he’s now enjoying the many art opportunities that Selkirk has to offer.
His advice for people who are just starting their art journey is to put themselves out there, even if it’s scary.
“It’s a bit hard to join a group and paint in front of other people, because you’re kind of vulnerable. You’re exposing yourself. And, from what I’ve heard from other people, too, who are artists, is don’t doubt yourself. Just have fun and try to keep the pressure off. Enjoy it. It’s a wonderful learning experience. It can be a wonderful social experience as well. I always say just jump in with both feet,” he said.
He also feels that creating art is great for your health.
“Art is just a wonderful thing to do for you. It can relieve stress. I find it very meditative. When you start a session where you’re doing some artwork, it’s amazing how fast the time flies.
Duncan welcomes artists and non-artists from the community to stop by the Gwen Fox Gallery and check out the show.
“You don’t have to stand close to the artwork to see it. You can stand back and absorb. I think it’s an opportunity to come here and not only see some fantastic art by a huge variety of artists, but I think what’s really interesting to think about when you’re here is (to) look at the paintings and artwork and try to get a sense of the emotion or action that they portray. That’s something that’s kind of fun to do,” he said.
Amrit Sandhu
Amrit Sandhu
Sandhu is a painter who is showing one of a series of paintings that she’s created this month.
“I would describe my art, probably, as a mix of contemporary and fantasy. I’ve experimented with a lot of different types of art, but specifically, the collection that I’m working on now is called the Engineering Purpose Collection. And so, a lot of it incorporates acrylic, oil, modelling paste, and foil leaf. All of those have come together to create ethereal landscapes, and a lot of them are cloudscapes,” she said.
These pieces are quite special because of the unique blend of mediums that she’s using.
“I’ve narrowed my palette down to just black and white paint, just to really work on learning more about shadows and light. So, you’ll see a lot of that throughout my art — trying to learn how different light can refract on different parts of clouds and create different images — and even when natural light hits the paintings, you’ll see that, because of the foil leaf, certain parts of it would be illuminated a bit more than other parts. I just like that idea of details slowly revealing themselves. It’s like a fun game of, Where’s Waldo when it comes to my paintings,” she explained.
Sandhu explained that this collection that she has created is inspired by finding one’s purpose.
“In my childhood home, the traditional academic pathway was highly admirable, so I first leaned more into that, and I loved connecting with people and health care, so I worked more in veterinary settings and pharmacies and health care. My parents were always really hardworking, so they enforced this idea of you should be like the jack of all trades and know how to do a little bit of everything, whether that’s changing tires, working in nature, working in health care. They were like, just do it all. And, it created the sense of perfectionism and independence in a way. And so, I went ahead, got my Masters of Public Health, and it wasn’t until I was working two years in the federal government at the Public Health Agency of Canada, when we had these mass layoffs and we had huge budget cuts, and reaching what felt like rock bottom at the moment that really pushed me to reevaluate my purpose and understand what I wanted out of life,” she explained.
With art being a passion of hers, she decided that it was the time to pursue that dream.
The specific piece that she’s sharing this month from the Engineering Purpose Collection is The In Between.
“It’s the third piece in my collection that I created, and I wanted to create this moment where you have a sense of pause. A lot of my other pieces, you’ll see stormy cloudscapes and this drive and like an urge towards your goal, is the feeling that comes from those pieces, especially when I was creating them. I don’t want to give others meaning for the pieces, but this is what resonated with me when I was creating it. But with this specific one, I wanted to capture that moment of stillness. So, it does depict a cloudscape and a lake, but you’re standing at this point of view where you’re not necessarily the person and the identity that you once were, but you also recognize, with the path and the moon illuminating this path, that you maybe have a long way to go before becoming the person that you want to be,” said Sandhu.
She is a newer artist at the Gwen Fox Gallery and was attracted to the gallery because it is a way to get her art out there.
“As an artist, sometimes when you create work, you’re hesitant to show it to people, and part of this collection is really forcing myself to step out of my comfort zone. I want to say, (my) mantra for the past year has always been just being one per cent better than I was yesterday. So instead of hiding my art, I saw this opportunity to join the art gallery, and I figured, you know what, we’ll just give (it) a shot,” she said.
Sandhu hopes that you visit the gallery this month and check out the show.
“There’s a lot of beautiful work here that’s very different. Some of it captures landscapes that you’ll see in Manitoba, some of it captures the celestial, kind of whimsical art that I’m creating, and so there’s no shortage of variety here. If you’re looking for inspiration, or if you’re looking for support, a moment of pause, or just a welcoming community, I think this gallery offers that,” she said.
