Roberta Zander and James McEvoy will combine their artistic talents in a joint show at the Pearl Ellis Gallery.
Two For The Show opens Oct. 25 and runs through Nov. 6. The show will be in the new upstairs location of 1729 Comox Avenue. Roberta and Jim would like to invite everyone to attend their reception that will be held Oct. 29 from 1 to 4 p.m.
Both artists will be in attendance and look forward to meeting you and sharing their paintings and sculpture with you. This will be their first show together, but both artists are well known in their own right.
Roberta moved to the Valley in 2003 and is a longtime member of the Pearl Ellis Gallery as well as Brushworks, which is where she met Jim McEvoy. She has been a member of the Federation of Canadian Artists and participated regularly in the Originals Only shows which are held twice yearly in Comox.
Roberta’s work has been shown at Timms Gallery and Muir Gallery as a member of the Federation of Canadian Artists and she received awards for her work in both venues. Roberta began painting seriously at age 48, after her children had all left home. However she already had an Associate of Fine Arts degree from college.
She remembers that as a child, the Old Vancouver Art Gallery awarded two places to each school for two years of lessons. She was lucky enough to be one of the two chosen at her school.
They would lay out canvas on the floor of the Gallery and let the students draw and paint. They also got instruction in clay and puppet making.
Roberta works mainly in acrylics but sometimes uses coloured ink and has also done work in clay. She has a unique style, which is instantly recognizable to her many followers and fans.
“Bobbi” finds inspiration everywhere: in the scenery of countries where she has travelled, groups of children playing in the rain, street scenes of people with umbrellas and the trees of the B.C. landscape. Bobbi’s work is always in demand when she shows at the Pearl Ellis Gallery and happily, she will take commissions.
Bobbi met McEvoy four years ago when he became a member of Brushworks. The two artists have developed a mutual respect and rapport over their years of association.
Jim was born in Malaysia to British parents. He attended school in Malaysia, Australia and England. As a child, he was always drawing and his favourite medium to work in is oil.
As a young man, he pursued a career in physiotherapy and his knowledge of anatomy helped him greatly with his drawing. At 24, he married and moved to Canada.
His first artistic endeavours here were to decorate the walls of his apartment. However, his new friends kept walking off with his wall decorations and he was kept quite busy replacing them!
Jim is very proud of the fact that he has had no formal artistic training. In spite of this he did many commissions for offices and yearly attended the Women's’ Committee to the Art Gallery summer show that was held in Assiniboine Park.
His career kept him busy from 12 to 14 hours a day, but he still found time for his art, and fell back into it full time when he retired. His next great love was sculpting, which he discovered when he moved to Comox and attended a seniors’ class at e’Esterre House sculpting in soapstone. Jim was hooked!
The Pearl Ellis Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. upstairs at 1729 Comox Ave. Admission is free, donations are gratefully accepted and the gallery is now a tax-free zone. Members can receive 10 per cent off the price of any artwork purchased during a reception day.
You are urged to attend this eclectic show and enjoy the new premises of the Pearl Ellis Gallery. Either Bobbi or Jim will be in attendance throughout the show