Archive
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Eva McCauley
Comments Off on Eva McCauleyEva McCauley is a painter and printmaker known for her atmospheric, expressive paintings of sky, water and shifting landscapes that explore the passage of time and the transient and ephemeral nature of the spiritual and physical world. She is also a figurative artist, and is fascinated with the human condition, and the fragility of our existence. She divides her time between her studios in Bear River, N.S., and Elmira, Ontario, painting people and places that are steeped in personal significance.
Her work explores the process of recollection and how we process memories. Her focus is not on the recreation of a specific image or moment, but the creation of something informed by the act of remembering — an act which renders past experiences as ephemeral, and constantly in flux, resulting in works which perpetually shift, their images lyrical, ghost-like, and ethereal.
She studied visual art at the Ontario College of Art and Design, receiving an O.C.A.D. diploma in drawing & painting (1983), a B.F.A. from University of Guelph (1994) and a M.F.A. from University of Waterloo (1996).
Eva’s exhibition ‘Splendid Isolation’ will be featured in the main gallery at the Elora Centre for the Arts from May 26 – July 24, 2022. For more information on the exhibition please click here.
She has exhibited internationally and nationally, with solo exhibitions at ArtsPlace Gallery in Annapolis Royal, N.S., (Splendid Isolation, 2021), St. Thomas Elgin Art Centre (World’s Edge, 2014); Wandesford Quay Gallery in Cork (In/Visible, Aug/Sept. 2012); Limerick Printmakers (In/Visible, August/Sept. 2010); Elora Centre for the Arts, Elora, Ontario, and Harbinger Gallery, Waterloo (Solas agus Scáth, 2009), Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery (Momento Mori); Open Studio, Toronto (Ruptured Time); Bau-Xi Gallery, Toronto (Colour of Memory, Mutable as Water, Gaze); and solo and group exhibitions at Harbinger Gallery, Waterloo; Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery 2nd Biennale (2005); and the Castellani Museum in Lewiston, N.Y. (Crossing Borders). Her work is included in collections in Canadian Embassies all over the world and is part of a Canadian boxed set collection sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
McCauley is the recipient of many awards and scholarships, including the W.O. Forsythe Painting Award (1983), Bronfman Printmaking Award (1993), Warner Lambert Printmaking Scholarship (1994) “Best in Printmaking Award” at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition (1996), “Ernst & Young Purchase Award” (1996), a Canada Council “Quest” Grant for Emerging Artists (2000), as well as an Ontario Council Project Grant (2007). Her work can be found in many private and public collections such as the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Waterloo Regional Labour Council, and the Ernst & Young Canadian Print Collection.
She is an art educator, and has been a sessional professor of Fine Art at the University of Waterloo since 2002.
To find out more about Eva, please visit her website.
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Janice Mason Steeves
Comments Off on Janice Mason SteevesJanice Mason Steeves graduated from Ontario College of Art & Design and the University of Manitoba. She is represented by galleries in Canada, with work in public, corporate, and private collections in Canada and internationally. As well as an active one-on-one Art Mentoring program, Janice teaches painting workshops in Canada, the U.S., and Europe through a program she’s developed called Workshops in Wild Places. She has also been awarded artist residencies in Spain, Ireland, Sweden, Iceland and Wyoming, USA. She has had several solo and group exhibitions and participated in several artist residencies across the world.
Janice’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.
“We’ve reached a time in human history when our global environmental crisis requires that we make permanent life-style changes. More than ever before, we need to fall back in love with the land. Silence is our meeting place.” – Gordon Hempton
The artwork of Janice Mason Steeves in this collection expresses a love of Earth. The work communicates a concern for the earth and an abiding love for it. Aiming to acknowledge and to express that meeting place of silence mentioned by Gordon Hempton, Janice’s work reflects her practice of meditation, where the mind becomes quiet and deeper connections are possible.
Applying oil paint in extremely thin, translucent layers that overlap each other her work reflects the rhythms of nature, the seasons, the cycles, the wind. She builds up the surface gradually, layer by layer, creating luminous colour fields that appear to move with the regularity of breath. They are experiential surfaces that offer quiet space, a form of visual meditation.
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Pearl Van Geest
Comments Off on Pearl Van GeestMeet 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.
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Yangyang Pan
Comments Off on Yangyang PanComing 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.
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Callie Gray
Comments Off on Callie GrayI’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.
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Laurie Skantzos
Comments Off on Laurie SkantzosLaurie’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.
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Carolyn Sharp
Comments Off on Carolyn Sharp“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.
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Vera Kisseleva
Comments Off on Vera KisselevaExhibition on now at the Elora Centre for the Arts by Russian Canadian artist Vera Kisseleva celebrates how the forest can harken our best memories
Have you ever experienced a moment when an unfamiliar or new place looks and feels so familiar? Artist Vera Kisseleva explores the essence of familiarity and its intangible and magical way of bringing us back to happy memories. “Sometimes I’m walking in nature and the way the light is filtering through the upper tree branches triggers a memory for me – usually it reminds me of camping with my family or that quiet peace that comes with the setting sun” says Kisseleva, a Russian-born Canadian artist now living and working in her studio in Fergus, Ontario.
Kisseleva’s bold and vibrant paintings focus on trees and the changing seasons. “I am fascinated with the drastic differences between the Canadian seasons” she says. “Each season brings something extraordinary to our lives and affects our feelings, emotions and wellbeing”. In Kisseleva’s new exhibition at the Elora Centre for the Arts, ‘Making the Unfamiliar Familiar’, the artist represents the seasons and hopes you will see glimpses from your own experiences and memories within her work. “Spring teaches us to hope, summer reminds us to be outside and feel alive, winter encourages us to slow down and reflect” says Kisseleva. “I believe that Autumn is the most spectacular time of year, the quiet whisper in the breeze, the rustle of dry leaves and the beautiful view of the reflection in an autumn lake – it evokes such nostalgia of our best and brightest memories, as summer comes to a close and a new chapter begins” she explains.
Vera Kisseleva is an established award-winning artist best known for her paintings inspired by the Canadian landscape. She is also a member of the annual Elora Fergus Studio Tour and Elora Plein Air Festival. Her pieces are in collections all across the globe.
‘Making the Unfamiliar Familiar’ will run in the gallery at the Elora Centre for the Arts until July 9, 2023.
For more information about the exhibition and the artist please visit our website at https://eloracentreforthearts.ca/exhibition-making-the-unfamiliar-familiar-by-vera-kisseleva/
Prices are in Canadian dollars and do not include shipping costs. Prices are subject to an additional 13% HST.
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Tim Murton
Comments Off on Tim MurtonTim 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.
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Rachel Albano
Comments Off on Rachel AlbanoRachel 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.