Exhibitions at Place des Arts

Colour: A Personal Response and Lyrical Expressions will be on display from January 12 - February 10, 2018; Balance will be on display from January 12 - March 17, 2018

Colour: A Personal Response
Fibre Art by Lesley Turner and Sarah McLaren [Atrium Gallery]

Lesley Turner's response to each colour’s vibration is expressed through line and value explorations while looking at the concept of synesthesia. For each of her 24 works, she has created a painted book that connects to each work. In addition, through another set of books, Lesley invites the viewer to write their personal responses to colour.

Sarah McLaren's single monochromatic hue translations of iconic paintings are her emotional responses to the works. Within her 12 fibre and thread renditions of these painted works, she incorporates a trademark of the artist. Books of artist quotations connect the artist to the work.

Balance
Fibre Art by Mardell Rampton [Mezzanine Gallery]

Mardell Rampton creates contemporary abstract textile paintings using her own hand-dyed, painted and marked cloth and commercial textiles. The work varies from subtle to vibrant: the influence of a long-standing love of the oceans, skies and forests of the West Coast of Vancouver Island permeates the pieces. Choosing to work in series, Rampton explores a number of topics, including Balance, Equilibrium, Connections and Beaches.

Central to the textile paintings in this exhibition is the tension between striving to achieve balance while immersed in a continual state of imbalance. The elements in the artworks depict different sensations, sometimes disconnected, sometimes on a tangent striving to regain connection with the center, other times unable to reach a place of groundedness.

Rampton’s love of textiles, texture and colour come together in her artwork. Much of the cloth is hand dyed, hand painted and marked. Each piece of cloth is cut, one small, thin organically shaped rectangle at a time, then stitched together to form the initial layer of the composition. After layering this over a bamboo batting and a cotton backing, metres upon metres of thread is added by densely stitching over the entire surface to add additional colour and three-dimensional texture, drawing viewers in to see the nuances of the details.

Lyrical Expressions
Acrylic and oil works by Jane Appleby [Leonore Peyton Salon]

Jane Appleby is a painter inspired by the Canadian landscape in the tradition of painters such as the Group of Seven. Appleby's current focus is on creating an emotional response to the landscape using brushwork and colour with a lyrical expression in oil, acrylic and watercolour.

The works in this exhibition explore an artist’s journey into abstraction inspired by landscape. Line, transitions of colour and organic shapes are themes throughout the work based on a narrative of mountains, oceans and forests. The pieces move from recognizable landscapes to abstract expressions of the experience.
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