Three Denman Island artists will exhibit their new works at the Denman Island Seniors Gallery between Aug. 3 and 16.
The opening night is Aug. 3 with a reception from 7 to 9 p.m.
Francesca Barker, Jane Fawkes, and Katherine Vogt, all long-term residents of Denman Island, offer a diverse arrangement of original callograph prints, contemporary paintings and multi-media, and three dimensional works — including woodcarvings.
Barker attended the NIC fine arts diploma program and has been recently accepted into the Emily Carr University. Her multi-media collage paintings express social commentary over a landscape abstraction and are inspired by a deep appreciation of the natural world.
Her themes touch on the consumption of natural resources, mainstream media, land, and cultural dysfunction produced from contemporary cultures seemingly unsatisfiable need for more. Her most recent work utilizes found castaway newspaper flyers overlaying painted canvases in a visually arresting weave of blurred images and text.
A sense of industry hyper-speed and overwhelming product mass is contained in lines that cut simply and cleanly through the canvas like a river or flag.
Fawkes graduated from Emily Carr in 1991 and is inspired by the grandeur of nature, the experimental nature of printmaking, and the mature works of Milton Avery. She will show the callograph plates used to make her prints alongside the 33 prints which are reflections of two particularly special landscapes: Lake O'Hara in the Canadian Rockies and the Komas beaches on the north end of Denman Island.
The colors are soft and muted and the simple, strong shapes contrast the minutest of textured detail. The pictures seem to hum and buzz in their peacefulness, with suggestions of the geological movements and processes that created their landscapes.
Vogt is a recent graduate of Emily Carr University and will show a broad range of paintings, 3-D works, and wood carvings.
Some of this work is spiritual or mystical in substance while other pieces reflect on immediate global issues such as Fukushima, genetically modified seeds, just-in-time food production systems, the decline of the mainstream media, and the current weather disasters affecting crops and threatening food-stocks. Each work is the culmination of experimental and intuitive processes.
The exhibit is open daily from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
— Denman Island Seniors Gallery