Meet artist Pearl Van Geest
Colour and expressive line feature in my work. I generally work in series, developing a concept visually until the idea no longer compels me. In the making, I like to create a tension between open experimental mark-making and a refined deliberate responses to what was laid down, gradually becoming more responsive to the canvas. Much of my work is in one way or another inspired by prolonged observation of the natural world –colours and colour relationships, patterns and compositional structure, as well as textures and forms. I have been in my studio in the Trafalgar Building in downtown Guelph since 1997. During that time I have exhibited my work in solo and group shows across Canada. I have also developed interactive exhibitions where people can become involved in the creation of artworks, including Kiss Paintings whereby kiss marks are imprinted onto a canvas or topographical map before I return to my studio to paint in response to the pattern and design made by these marks. My work is part of the Canada Art Council’s Art Bank collection, and is in other private and corporate collections. I was the City of Guelph’s inaugural Artist in Residence, and together with participants, created an artwork that is on permanent display in the City of Guelph.
Pearl’s exhibition “Earth Poems: Resonance, Rythms and Reflections” is currently featured in the Minarovich gallery at the Elora Centre for the Arts from August 5 until September 12, 2021. This series of paintings featured in our virtual gallery are a study in reflections – shorelines mirrored into the water. Wondrous when paddling by, shorelines reflected into still lakes and rivers transform, when rotated, into all sorts of things.
Coming from away, I unpack my paint box to interpret the Canadian landscape from a different perspective. I tame the wilderness and make my gardens wild. With a bird’s eye view of the new, yet old earth around me, I challenge the Canadian Shield and honour the St. Lawrence Lowlands. It is an immigrant immersion. I learn the land and present its messages. The abstracted landscape lets me step into it gently, then build, with my brushstrokes, this new embrace to a release. I paint my way into a new space that does not contain me. It allows me to feel an unfamiliar freedom and, at the same time, to be myself.
My focus is on chromatic lyricism. My paintings, with their exuberance and wild colours, develop and evolve as an intuitive reaction to my beautiful surroundings, whether as close as the garden or farther throughout the region. The resulting work is an interplay of my memories and my present, as I bring together the ethereal and the physicality of the land around me. Perhaps this distillation of nostalgia helps me to understand the here and now.
What I wish to present is my journey. While ostensibly based on the dynamic visual forces of nature, landscape and surroundings, these lyrical works are as much a landscape of my inner emotions, memories and history. I want my paintings to pulse with life and reveal a marriage of my cultural connections and ideas of aesthetics. This work allows me to consider the space between seen and unseen, which takes root in one’s senses and memory. I aim for the beauty and drama of evocative abstract painting within an ongoing exploration of what can be achieved in paint. I try to push the relation between form and colour to create a visual sensation of energy, emotion, and reality: epiphany.
Yangyang’s ‘Ephiphany’ solo exhibition at the Elora Centre for the Arts recently included captured the energy flow and the senses, and the fusion of eastern and western traditions. She grew up in China, where she got her art education. While much of her influence comes from Chinese culture and arts, she is also influenced by western abstract expressionism painters like Willem De Kooning, Joan Mitchell, Philip Guston and Cy Twombly, among others. Her work reflects the blend of ideas between east and west, and is emblematic of the global nature of art.
We are currently featuring the work of Yangyang Pan at the Elora Mill Hotel & Spa. The pieces you see in her virtual gallery below are part of that exhibition, and are available for purchase.
I’m Callie Gray, an award winning international artist, and I create vibrantly colorful canvases.
I am fascinated in art as a language that bridges the physical and spiritual worlds. Through mindfulness, as I paint, I am able to connect to a deeper source within me, which is both healing and transcendent. It allows me to use spontaneous mark making and paint intuitively. Through this process I find greater understanding of myself and experience a unique connection to the world around me. And if it connects with someone and gives them joy then I have done my job.
Callie Gray’s work was recently featured in the main gallery at the Elora Centre for the Arts, in her solo show entitled ‘Everything in its right place’. The work showcased in exhibition is featured her on her virtual gallery page. For more information about her in-person gallery exhibition, please click here.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”– Leonardo Da Vinci
My aim is to …Go Deep rather than Wide
…explore a few things thoroughly rather than many things superficially
…use simplicity and constraint
and find elegant solution to complex problems.
“You are not separate from nature. We are all part of the One life that manifests itself in countless forms throughout the universe, forms that are completely interconnected. When you recognize the sacredness, the beauty, the incredible stillness and dignity in which a flower or a tree exists, you add something to the flower or the tree. Through your recognition, your awareness, nature to comes to know itself. It comes to know it’s own beauty and sacredness through you! – Eckhart Tolle.
Prices are in Canadian dollars and do not include shipping costs. Prices are subject to an additional 13% HST.
Laurie’s contemporary, process driven painting is largely inspired by the interactions of colour, shape and application. She was born in Toronto and studied fine art at the University of Waterloo. Her work is displayed in galleries throughout Ontario and she has been an active member of the art community for over twenty years, regularly participating in shows such as the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair and International Affordable Art Fairs with Spence Gallery. Laurie’s work is included in private and public collections across North America, Europe and Asia. She works from her studio in Guelph Ontario.
Laurie teaches sessions at the Guelph School of Art, Elora Centre for the Arts, The Hive in Alton Mills and a week long intensive workshop during the summer at the Wellington County Museum. She offers private and semi-private classes in her studio. The focus is on building a visual vocabulary of tools and techniques while further establishing each participant’s unique voice.
“Shape, colour, line, materiality of paint and the myriad ways that they can interact are the jumping off points for my painting explorations. I truly think of painting as a dedicated practice, one that I must return to as often as possible to feed my artistic curiosity and my soul. Endless fascination and dedication to remaining present in each moment fuel my quest to express what is, at first, intangible.”
Laurie held a solo exhibition at the Elora Centre for the Arts in 2019 entitled ‘Journey Into Process’ and was also featured in a group show in 2018 called ‘Gesture & Geometry’ in our gallery.
Prices are in Canadian dollars and do not include shipping costs. Prices are subject to an additional 13% HST.
“My paintings are an inventory of experiences felt by my deep connection to the lands and waters of Southern Ontario. I’m inspired by raging lakes & rivers, dramatic skies, wide open fields and bewildering cloud formations.
My work always begins from an abstract expressionist perspective, sometimes remaining in that form, sometimes moving into impressionism. It is my hope that the viewer will feel compelled by the paintings, experience a place of contemplation, a sense of wonder, and hopefully a connection with my art.”
Carolyn was part of a group show at the Elora Centre for the Arts entitled ‘H20 for Good: 3 Artists | 3 Walls | 1 Planet. She is also part of the annual Elora Fergus Studio Tour Gallery Show & Sale held in our gallery every year.
Prices are in Canadian dollars and do not include shipping costs. Prices are subject to an additional 13% HST.
The vast, enticing Canadian landscape and, more generally, nature’s dazzling colors serve as painter Vera Kisseleva’s primary inspirations. A native of Russia now based in rural Ontario, Vera has always been drawn to “the great outdoors” and she has her fill, living amongst endless corn and wheat fields, along with parks and lakes, where she and her family spend much time hiking, cycling, and kayaking—all of which constantly fuel her artistic inspiration. Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that she “lives her art.”
Vera studied fine arts and applied arts in college and worked for years as a graphic designer and commercial artist. Moving to Canada, though, and rediscovering nature’s vibrancy on such an immense scale drew her to painting, which she immediately saw as the ideal means for conveying the visual splendor of her new home.
Vera’s work, while influenced by Impressionism, combines a universalist appreciation of the landscape as artistic subject with more local, immediate concerns. From one piece to the next, though, what emerges is her individual perspective—her singular eye—capturing her response to this all-encompassing environment rather than simply recording her surroundings with mechanical precision. Nature’s essence, so to speak, is not only how it looks—its visual imprint, the spaces it fills (or leaves empty)—but its dynamics: the infinite ways it changes and renders every moment both absolutely unique and utterly familiar. Vera’s work emerges from such moments, ultimately celebrating and expanding them.
“In my paintings, I try to express something that catches my eye at a specific point in time,” says Vera. “There are dramatic moments happening constantly in nature, which are infinitely varied not only visually, but also emotionally. It’s this personal impact—between what I see and how I feel—that’s really at the core of my work.”
Vera’s bold colors, thick brush strokes, and the quick pace at which she works are the means through which she is able to deftly capture and express some of the many sublime moments she experiences. She often does pencil and watercolor sketches outdoors—en plein air; and then uses these sketches and/or reference photos to make her finished pieces on canvas with oil or acrylic paint.
Fundamental to Vera’s work is a paradox, her embrace of which clearly elevates her art beyond the norm: nature changes by the second, and painting can reveal such changes and sensitize viewers to the inherent wonder of the natural world’s constant flux; yet it also preserves the memory of the emotions associated with these changes—which, in our mind, is usually, interchangeable with nature itself.
Vera is one of the curated artists featured in the annual Elora Fergus Studio Tour gallery show and sale at the Elora Centre for the Arts, and her work has been featured in our Artisan Shop.
Prices are in Canadian dollars and do not include shipping costs. Prices are subject to an additional 13% HST.
Hi! I’m Jennifer Elliotson. I work from my studio in Jordan Station, Ontario, beneath an old ginkgo tree.
I’ve always been an artist, but I haven’t always been a painter. For 20 years, I was a professional florist. When I gave up flowers, I fulfilled a life-long ambition of becoming a painter and immediately turned my flower studio into a painting studio. I haven’t looked back. I’m self-taught and have forged my own path, developing a recognizable style that dances between the tension of fine details and broad, loose brushstrokes. Focussing on the relationship between vibrant colour and light, my paintings are lively and expressive.
Story-telling is at the heart of my subjects and I paint from my own lifetime of experiences and memories. I’m inspired by our vast Canadian landscape, hiking in the Carolinian forest, majestic waterways … and flowers, of course! In each body of work I create, it’s my hope to not only bring a narrative to life with colour and imagination, but for you to be able to find yourself within it.
Jennifer’s new “North of Here” collection of originals and prints features northern Ontario’s iconic bent and rugged trees and rocks. “When we were out on northern Ontario lakes, kayaking past weather-worn trees and massive rocks, I could see that the landscape had something to teach me. Gracefully leaning in the direction of wind, it’s the trees’ flexibility that accounts for their endurance and resilience. Weather-worn roots embedded in cracks of prehistoric rock both stabilize and nourish. You can see the influence of prevailing wind against their branches. These trees are bent, but not broken. I aspire to be this resilient, to bend in wind”.
Prices are in Canadian dollars and do not include shipping costs. Prices are subject to an additional 13% HST.
Tim currently lives and works in Elora, Ontario, Canada.
Born in Hythe, Kent England, Tim emigrated to Canada armed with a B.Sc. in construction technology. After a relatively brief career in mining engineering field Tim started a completely new life as an artist. He enrolled at the Ontario College of Art and later studied in Florence and Paris.
Tim’s painting style ranges from impressionism to photo-realism, but his work is always inspired by the qualities of light.
Tim spent over 18 years in the Toronto film industry, accumulating scenic art credits on more than 40 feature films in Canada, US, England and New Zealand. He is now living his life’s ambition as an independent fine artist.
Tim’s paintings have been exhibited at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre, Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery, The Harbinger Gallery, MacDonald Stewart Art Centre, Art Gallery of Windsor, Karger Gallery, Elora Centre for the Arts and Chimaera Gallery, UK among others. His work is in many private collections throughout Canada, England, Europe and the U.S.
In 2019, Tim had a solo exhibition in our Minarovich gallery called “The Air Conditioned Nightmare“. He also featured some of his bright and fresh oil paintings in the Harris gallery during a satellite studio show in 2019.
Rachel holds a degree in Studio Art and Art History from the University of Guelph. Her painting is an intuitive process; multiple layers are covered and revealed until they culminate in a cohesive piece that testifies to this process. Her work has a sense of the artist’s presence through gestural marks and sometimes a heavy scraping back of layers. The use of palette knives creates a sense of rawness and roughness- a loss of control that invites an element of chance into the work. Her aim is to create paintings that facilitate a sense of hope and inspiration to her viewers.
Rachel is one of our featured artists on display at the Elora Mill Hotel & Spa, she has had several pieces in our Artisan Shop at ECFTA. In addition she is one of the curated artists in the annual Elora Fergus Studio Tour show and sale in our main gallery.
My Recent Work
How does a painting make you feel?
“Does it bring you back to a certain memory or place? My latest works aim to do exactly that. Through a combination of colours and textures, I want the FEELING of the painting to speak to you. I want it to surround you and transport you back to that place… that time that you were in complete peace, or refreshment, or excitement. Abstract paintings have the power to speak beyond words and images, transcending the rational mind and triggering the heart. I want these paintings to recreate that memory and the intrinsic emotions for you whenever you experience them.”
Prices are in Canadian dollars and do not include shipping costs. Prices are subject to an additional 13% HST.
SYLVIA GALBRAITH is an Ontario-based photographer whose work includes landscape, documentary, and commercial photography. As a self-taught artist, she employs a variety of methods; traditional analogue, digital capture and historical processes all come into play as dictated by a situation. The ephemeral quality of these historical processes complements the nature of her subject, in that light, landscape and human situations are transitory, and will not last. Recently Galbraith has begun working with video within the context of her landscape photography.
Galbraith’s current practice is an exploration of deep-rooted connections to one’s place of origin. As a child of immigrants, she considers connections to the landscape – the physical and psychological meaning of “place (guilt, acceptance, ownership) and the stratification of experience. Her images form a conceptual study of the vital sense of belonging and community within the context of displacement, immigration and resettlement in lands that once belonged to others.
Galbraith is drawn to some of Canada’s loneliest places, and has participated in residencies in Newfoundland, Banff and Northern Ontario. She teaches photography at Conestoga College in Kitchener, from her own studio in Fergus ON, and is frequently a guest instructor at venues across Canada. Her photographs have been exhibited across Canada and internationally, and are featured in private and corporate collections.
In 2020, Sylvia was featured in our main gallery for her solo exhibition entitled “Continuum: Considerations of Memory in Unquiet Landscapes.
Notes about the photographs:
Each photograph is printed to museum standards using archival photographic paper.
In most cases, editions are limited to 6, plus one artist’s proof.
Notes about the framing:
Each photograph is mounted on museum quality art board, and framed with archival backing and spacers and conservation clear glass. Black wood frame, shadowbox fit.
Prices are in Canadian dollars and do not include shipping costs. Prices are subject to an additional 13% HST.
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