Junctures
2020-05-30 00:00 - 2020-07-25 00:00 UTC
I-Chun Jenkins
Maja Padrov

Steve Jones
Ralph Simpson

They share an interest in exploring traditional methods using new materials and innovative approaches. Their individual expressions and explorations overlap in a series of conversations that speak to the specifics of materiality, methodologies, ideas of repurposing and transformation. Their common inspiration is nature, natural materials and contemporary life. As much as they share in approach, they equally diverge in practice. Padrov and Simpson find imagery and resources on the forest floor, while Jenkins finds hers on the floor of her studio. Jones’ altered skateboards and Padrov’s ceramics exhibit the effect of human strength to shape, capture and still energy using pre and post-industrial materials, while in the artful conversation between form and function in Jenkins’ work, form dominates.
“I could no longer resist returning after a sojourn as a cafe owner in Fredericton, to the creative art of weaving. I looked around my studio and saw that what I had a lot of was magazines and so started my exploration of alternative ways of weaving non-textile materials into pieces of art”. I-Chun Jenkins
“Glaze chemistry is a mix of science and magic. “The complexity of materials that come from the earth, like fieldspare, minerals, metal oxides, when mixed in different proportions and exposed to the transformative power of fire, leads to unpredictable results. I have been working with volatile and unpredictable glaze materials trying to achieve lava and lichen like surfaces, or to produce the trompe l’oeil effect of wrought iron or stone”. Maja Padrov
“My work has a traditional wood turning feel, infused with a twist of colour. By removing the original function of the material and repurposing it into a different form, I am transforming energy. While I strip the old skate decks I can see and feel intensity and the history of the board and its skater. It is an extremely challenging material for traditional woodworking techniques”. Steve Jones
“It is my innate interest in the natural world that inspires my work. My baskets, vessels and sculptures arise from a deep curiosity and emergent understanding of my chosen materials.My work varies in style and form but what resonates in all my pieces is the underlying investigation into ways that plant materials can be used to spark interest and insight into the natural world”. Ralph Simpson

I-Chun Jenkins, Chaotic Thought, May 6, 2019, detail Paper

Steve Jones, Contours, 2019 Metal, recycled skateboard, found rock, various woods 2 x 3 feet x 2 inches

Maja Padrov, Large Blue Bowl, 2019 Stoneware, 7.5 x 15 x 14 inches

Maja Padrov, Consecutiveness, 2020 Stoneware, 5.5 x 48.5 x 5 inches

Ralph Simpson, Eco Orbs Mobile, 2020 Cedar bark, black ash, birch bark, spruce root, papyrus silk, waxed linen 36 x 30 inches

Jaye Ouellette
2020-08-01 - 2020-08-29
Sea Level“By constant observation, I strive to understand the Ocean’s mysterious magnetism. Water embodies the concept of endlessness, of complexities repeated from one drop to the vast sea, so powerful yet so very fragile. Those fleeting traits impress only on memory. I paint the Ocean as the mind understands it – not a precise recording, nor the rendering of an impressionist’s flourish, but something between the two. My work is built around those singular details, focusing on creating movement and luminosity. My depictions are purely of water, without land, sky or scale, one is lost, consumed, ensnared. The paintings capture a slice of time that the ocean will never again replicate. I notice these moments through visceral reflex. These are the elements that move me and compel me to depict the Ocean. I paint the sea itself, caught in its persistent motion, a meditative reflection on this ancient body, at times so violent and other times so serenely beautiful, that has birthed legend, tragedy, life.”
Jaye Ouellette
Since moving from Toronto to Nova Scotia, Jaye Ouellette’s work has continued to receive serious acclaim. Most notably Ouellette’s work was selected for the ground breaking exhibition ‘Terroir: A Nova Scotia Survey’ at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the US and France.

Hooked Rugs
2020-08-01 08:00 - 2020-08-29 17:00 UTC
Rug hooking began in the early to mid 1800’s, possibly by sailors who would fashion a hook from a nail and use the burlap, linen or cotton available onboard ship as a backing. Soon it became a winter activity, when the adults in a family would re-purpose cloth scraps into rugs and bed coverings.
In the mid-19th century when hooked rugs were first made, floor covering was a luxury in Canada. The wealthy might have an imported oriental rug or perhaps could afford commercial loom-woven carpeting. Others might have a hand-woven rug, but the hooked rug solved the problem of covering cold floors cheaply, making warm bed coverings and were the final stage in the recycling of hand-me-down clothing.
Very little 19th-century everyday clothing is left in Canada: cloth was too precious to waste and much of it ended up in quilts or rugs. Most likely rug hooking developed independently and simultaneously in several centres: Québec, the Maritimes and New England. Hooked rugs were made in much greater numbers in the eastern half of the continent than in the western half since, by the time the Canadian West was settled, store-bought floor coverings had become readily available.
There are a number of famous and distinctive cottage industries established in the Atlantic provinces including Cheticamp, Nova Scotia, initiated by Mrs. Alexander Graham Bell and the Grenfell mission, established by Dr. Wilfred Grenfell in Labrador, both of which have created and sold rugs for close to a century.
Unlike quilts, which are often treasured within a family and passed from one generation to the next, old hooked rugs are usually orphans whose family history has been lost. It is rare to find a very old rug whose maker is known. However, one famous rug hooker was Emily Carr, who made rugs to supplement the income she earned from her boarding house.
In 1868 Edwards Sands Frost, a Maine tin peddler, devised a series of zinc cutouts that allowed him to mass-produce stencilled patterns on burlap for rug hooking (an early version of paint by number). Other companies also entered the market. By the mid-1890s Garrett’s of New Glasgow, NS, was producing Bluenose rug patterns. In 1894 Wells and Richardson of Montréal published patterns in its Diamond Dye Rug Books (“Do not sell your rags to the travelling rag-gatherer; save them and work them up into handsome and useful Rugs and Mats”). By 1905 Eaton’s was advertising Monarch hooked rug patterns in its catalogue, and in the early years of the century Hambly and Wilson of Toronto also produced patterns on burlap. In Maine in the 1930s Pearl McGowan began a family business selling rug patterns and supplies.
Pattern rugs are still made today, but the most impressive rugs have always been those devised by the makers from their own materials and visions. Many old Canadian hooked rugs are surprisingly eloquent. They speak of economy, individuality and utility. Women incorporated into these rugs generations of clothing and memory-laden cloth – the very fabric of their lives.
The Canadian Encyclopedia, Max Allen, Rugs and Rug Making
National Guild of Pearl McGowan Hookcrafters

Lucie Quintal, Graffiti, 2020
“Reflecting on my mother’s death was the catalyst for Graffiti. I started this work using greys and I had the intention of making comforting repetitive squares all over. Then life happened.
The squares were left behind. Circles started to appear. Colours came out. Somehow, life became colorful again. Hope and continuity prevailed.
Graffiti is mixed fibres, mixed emotions, a symbiosis between life and death, ultimately being one with the world.” Lucie Quintal

Charline Collette, Hit and Miss Mat, 2020

Mary Grant, Duchess of York, 2014

Caroline Simpson, Hydrangea and wasp, 2019
“As a rug hooker, I draw my inspiration mainly from nature: the plants, animals, and built scenery found around my home and in the countryside. I create my designs mainly from photographs that I have taken, and I use natural materials—such as hand-dyed wool fabrics and yarns—hooked into backings of linen or burlap. I explore ways to combine various elements, such as people, animals, and buildings, into a cohesive artwork that evokes nature’s beauty and conveys a sense of immediacy.” Caroline Simpson

Ellen Gould Sullivan, Ellen B., 1907-1994
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, gift of Susan A. Murray

Christine Helen Irving, Horse, ~ 1920
The little Horse was hooked by my mother, Christine Helen Irving, when she was a young girl, 13-14 yrs of age. She was born in Pictou County, Nova Scotia and was married to William D Cameron.” Lois Thompson

Roy Tibbits, 2000-2020: A Watercolourist's Perspective
2020-09-05 - 2020-10-10
“I paint what I see.
Rust and decay are my forte.” – Roy Tibbits
The artist will be at the Gallery from 10:30 – 11:30 AM and 2:30 – 4:30 every Saturday of the exhibition. Please stop by to say hello.
Carleton County native, Roy Tibbits began painting in watercolour about 25 years ago. A member of several national associations, his work has been shown across Canada from British Columbia to the Maritimes. His interest in watercolour painting began with a “How To” book and the discovery that he was acquiring an ability to provide his viewer with a portrait of the region through its landscape, history and a realist’s commitment to verisimilitude.
Roy, like the Impressionists, often paints from nature, taking his painting equipment outdoors to respond directly to his en vironment, recording his careful observations throughout the seasons. Self-taught, Tibbits has embraced many of the traditional pictorial methods that assist the landscape artist in achieving space and volume, create mood and capture varying effects of light and atmosphere through colour, linear perspective and other compositional conventions.

“I live in the heart of the Saint John River Valley which provides an endless inspirational supply of nature at its best – not only the seasons but also the fast-changing local industries of farming, forestry and fishing. Old derelict buildings, outdated machinery and changing modes of transportation – they are all relics of the past now splendidly littering our landscape as glowing reminders of their previous importance.”
It wasn’t until the Renaissance that landscape developed as an independent subject. Previously nature was always seen in the background of scenes of the bible and narrative subjects from history, never the central subject of a painting. Since then landscape artists have communicated a variety of ideas about how we understand and live with nature. The pastoral landscape tradition from the 17th century showed peaceful scenes of a tamed landscape that provides food, shelter and security to its inhabitants. In the 19th century the picturesque tradition focused on the perfect view, a glimpse of the natural world framed and composed using many of the same compositional techniques Roy uses in his art, while the sublime landscape described the most dramatic moments of the supremacy and force of the natural.

Tibbits’ favourite subjects are the world as he has known and experienced it, the forests, farms and fields of Carleton County, showing us in his art his favourite and out of the way corners of the area. Combining bold, vibrant colour with a delicate painting technique, Tibbits captures the changing seasons, light and atmosphere. In his art, the viewer is always reminded of the passage of time and our evolving relationship with nature. Included in the exhibition is a wall of sketches and as Tibbits has said, “…each sketch has a story to tell”. Drop by the Gallery each Saturday morning or afternoon during the exhibition and Roy will be here to tell you a story or two and to listen attentively to one of yours.
Exhibitions
2004 – 2008 Federation of Canadian Artists Juried exhibitions, Vancouver
2008 Andrew & Laura McCain Art Gallery, Florenceville-Bristol, NB
2014 – 2017 Thompson Nicola Shuswap Juried Exhibition, Kamloops, BC
2015 Gainsborough Gallery, Calgary, AB

Awards
1994 Second Place Winner at the Atlantic National Exhibition, Saint John New Brunswick
2016 S.J. Sloan Award, Open Water Exhibition presented by the Canadian Painters in Watercolour
2018 Winner of the Rockwell Art Supplies/Eureka Award #1, A Symphony in Watercolour international exhibition presented by International Watercolour Society of Canada and the Society of
Painters in Watercolour
2018 and 2019 Winner of the Honourable Mention in the 365 Online Exhibition and Calendar Project, with a painting featured in the 2019 and 2020 Official Federation of Canadian Artists Calendar.

Art of The Book 2018 in 2020
2020-10-17 10:30 - 2020-11-14 17:00 UTC
The Art of the Book 2018 is an international juried exhibition of the work of members of the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild. Occurring every five years, this international show marks the 35th anniversary of the Guild and will be the only opportunity to see the show in Atlantic Canada.
The show was juried by four outstanding professionals: Betsy Palmer Eldridge, Lang Ingalls, Jan Elsted and Susan Warner Keene who met for two days to inspect the submissions in person, discuss each book’s merit and select the show. The final selections demonstrate artistic merit, technical competence and offer unique opportunity for education in the various aspects of book making. The exhibition examines eight aspects of the book makers’ art: Fine Binding, Fine Printing, Restoration, Box Making, Artists’ Books, Papermaking, Paper Decoration and Calligraphy.
Many of the books exhibit the extraordinarily exacting techniques involved in traditional bookmaking while others are uniquely individualistic. Some are collaborative creations between printer, writer and book binder while others were authored, bound and created by one artist. Many are exemplary displays of the full integration of form and content, with details in the binding, stitching, materials and structure echoing and supporting the artistic expression. Regardless of the approach, the breadth of creative expression and artistry will not disappoint.
Jerene Lane: The Fisher’s Boy
Embossed footprints and rolling waves complement Jerene Lane’s celebrated calligraphy of Henry David Thoreau’s poem “The Fisher’s Boy”:
“My life is like a stroll upon the beach,
⁠As near the ocean’s edge as I can go;
My tardy steps its waves sometimes o’erreach,
⁠Sometimes I stay to let them overflow.
My sole employment ’tis, and scrupulous care,
⁠To place my gains beyond the reach of tides,
Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare,
⁠Which Ocean kindly to my hand confides.
I have but few companions on the shore:
⁠They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea;
Yet oft I think the ocean they’ve sailed o’er
⁠Is deeper known upon the strand to me.
The middle sea contains no crimson dulse,
⁠Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view;
Along the shore my hand is on its pulse,
⁠And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew.”1

Sarah Jones: Idyll
2021-01-23 - 2021-03-13
Artist StatementMy art practice explores interactions with manufactured and industrial landscapes through painting and installation. I am particularly interested in how Maritime cities and the local industrial heritage of Saint John contribute to notions of regional identity.
Stephen Parrish, Coast of New Brunswick, 1882, Etching
Years ago, I encountered this etching in the New Brunswick Museum by American artist Stephen Parrish (1846-1938) and learned that he and a fellow artist passed through Saint John, NB in the summer of 1881on an etching and painting tour of the Maritime provinces. Coast of New Brunswick, 1882, features small sailing vessels, rustic wharves, fisher folk and the quiet harbour of Saint John. The rusticity in the depiction did not correspond with what my understanding was of Saint John in the late nineteenth-century. I was a history student at the time, and I knew enough to recognize a disconnect. Saint John of 1881 would hardly have been described as quaint. The city, then as now, was an industrial centre with shipping and construction activity and port-side factories. This disconnect – depicting the quaintly idyllic and rustic where there should be industrialization – is not an isolated phenomenon. Parrish was part of a wider tradition in British and American landscape painting of the nineteenth century of romanticizing the rural and the maritime. This quest for the picturesque meant avoiding or creatively re-framing evidence of modernity and industrialization and in doing so, reaffirming a pervasive idea that the pre-industrial embodies something that is somehow purer and more authentic.
Idyll, 2019 responds to Parrish’s etching, by restaging in the painting, the same 360-degree landscape surveyed from the same vantage point as the historical work. Moveable screens allow only some portions of the painting to be seen, which I hope signal the artist’s role in directing the gaze and deciding what is left in or out of the frame. I would like this artwork to remind us of the agency of both artist and viewer and prompt the questions: what are we seeing? What and who is included or excluded and why? What is beyond our gaze?
More recently I have been looking at historical representations of Maritime landscape in art and questioning the role of these landscapes in constructing a narrative about the ideal Maritime landscape. I am currently working on projects, including the storm paintings, that explore the role of historical representations in crafting current social attitudes towards manufactured/industrialized landscape, how nostalgia for an imagined or idealized historical landscape impacts current regional identity, and how notions of the historical ‘Folk’ manifest in myself and my own identity.
BiographySarah Jones (BA, MA Art History) is a visual artist, art historian and curator. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and abroad, and her work is held in the public collections of the University of New Brunswick and the New Brunswick Art Bank. Jones is a recipient of numerous grants and awards, including funding from ArtsNB and Canada Council for the Arts.
Jones is based in Saint John, New Brunswick. In addition to her own practice, she is the curator at Jones Gallery and teaches art history occasionally at University of New Brunswick.
The artist would like to acknowledge support from ArtsNB and Canada Council for the Arts.
Video Interview with Sarah Jones

Colin Smith: One Kilometre of Florenceville
2021-01-23 08:00 - 2021-03-13 17:00 (America/Halifax)
Colin Smith taught high school art, theatre, and English for 20 years. His work has been exhibited in galleries throughout NB and is included in public and private collections. For 11 years, his drawings and cartoons were featured weekly in the Salon section of the Telegraph Journal. He works out of his studio in the River Art Centre in downtown Florenceville-Bristol. He is represented by the Spicer Merrifield Gallery in Saint John, NB.
Colin Smith a enseigné les arts, le théâtre et l’anglais au lycée pendant 20 ans. Ses œuvres ont été exposées dans des galeries d’art dans tout le Nouveau-Brunswick et font partie de collections publiques et privées. Pendant 11 ans, ses dessins et ses caricatures ont été présentés chaque semaine dans la section “Salon” du Telegraph Journal. Il travaille dans son atelier au River Art Centre, dans le centre-ville de Florenceville-Bristol.

Artist Statement“Life inspires me. Right now I spend a lot of time drawing birds: sometimes in imagined situations, sometimes in an eighteenth century engraving kind of way – sometimes they are Nature, sometimes they the Wings of Time or the Broken Heart of a Poet, but usually they are just birds. The landscape around here is slowly driving me crazy, because every time I look at it, after looking at it for thirty years, I see it moving like a live thing, just a series of slow undulations, studded with trees and potato fields.
For years I drew people interacting, in supermarkets and streets. I drew high school kids, simultaneously terrified and deeply self-assured. And I drew thousands of cartoons, and published some of them in the Salon Section of the Telegraph Journal for a decade – historical, topical, linguistic – really anything but overtly political. I don’t hate enough to be a political cartoonist.
I draw constantly. I doodle on paper, in books, over shopping lists, throughout my teacher planning book. I have done it since grade one. I have been a nanny, a bookbinder, a used bookseller, a warehouseman, a handyman, and now I am a teacher, but it’s all to support my doodling habit. If I wasn’t selling anything, I would still be drawing.
When I was eight, I found a copy of Syd Hoff’s “How to be a Cartoonist” in the Saint John Public Library. That, along with Jim Corbett’s “Maneaters of Kumaon” and the Freddy the Pig Detective books, was my Bible. Syd Hoff claimed you could make a living as a cartoonist, so I started in third grade. I filled notebooks with comic strips, and mailed some cartoons off to Playboy, which they politely returned. My rejection notice collection is still growing.
I have a sketchbook with me always, which I fill with phrases or doodles or ideas of what I see around me, and what I am thinking about. If I don’t set them down, they are lost. I roughly block out a drawing in pencil, usually working from these sketches, and then have at it with pen and ink. I like the finality of ink – once you put the mark on the paper, it is there. It encourages a mix of fluidity and improvisation. I tried technical pens, but I prefer the dip pens. The ink is usually richer, and the line of a dip pen modulates – it gets thinner and thicker as you go. The drawing is crosshatched and toned in with pen lines, then sometimes coloured ink washes or watercolour are added. A lot of my tonal squiggles have come from old engravings, where shading and tone were built up with marks, then a flat wash would be added to finish it off, and the ink and the wash would work together to create a strange volume.
I draw everything. It is, after all, a way of seeing.”

Gordon Dunphy Vessels
2021-03-27 - 2021-05-08
“What’s important to try to catch [is] the spirit that trees have, especially big old hardwood trees, and if I can catch that and make it look simple … the best forms are those that look as if they just happened.” Gordon Dunphy.
Gordon Dunphy lived on the banks of the Nashwaak River, near Taymouth, NB where he had a dairy farm until he turned from farming to embrace the art of wood turning, making a distinct and significant contribution to New Brunswick’s cultural landscape. The New Brunswick poet Michael Pacey has attributed an “innate sense of mischief as key to Dunphy’s explorations and subversions of time-honoured artistic binaries such as art and nature, art and craft, form and content, inside and outside.” Working with wood all his life, he turned stumps and gnarly burls into classic vessel forms, with paper-thin walls and highly polished surfaces, that maintain the distinctive characteristics of the original material and transcend the craft.
Some of his most distinctive pieces were created from burls, “when the cells start to grow faster than the tree itself, [they produce] a protruding growth on the tree. And often, not always, but often, it’s a beautiful grain in colour,” Dunphy said. The artist’s ability to find great beauty in a common, classic piece of New Brunswick nature, the hardwood tree, meant that very quickly his art was collected the world over, and he won every significant craft award in New Brunswick. “He just saw things in wood that nobody else could,” said Kate Rogers, previous director of the New Brunswick Crafts Council.
While co-curating this exhibition in 2019, Jennifer Pazienza observed that “Gordon is a poet whose verse is written upon and within his vessels. The object that stands before you, the spaces they create carry the poetic imagination of Gordon Dunphy. The poetics that constitute them resonate and reverberate with imagination that comes from the depths and reverie of his daydreams; a place where, as Gaston Bachelard said, time ceases to exist, and space is everything. These vessels ask us to consider ways they influence the space they occupy within the place we find them. They ask us to reflect upon them and our relationship to them, to engage with and beyond their surfaces and read between their lines and shape”.
Considered one of the finest wood turners in North America, nearly 30 works were donated to the Beaverbrook’s collection in 2009 after the artist died. Many of them are on view here. The collection was assembled by the artist as a legacy documenting his career. “In a sense, Dunphy curated this exhibition himself,” says John Leroux, the Gallery’s Manager of Collections and Exhibitions.
Exhibition co-curated by Jennifer Pazienza and John Leroux and organised by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.

Out of the Woods:James Buxton,Francine Simard Levesque, Colin Smith
2021-03-27 - 2021-05-08
Out of the Woods brings together three carvers from northern New Brunswick who are inspired by nature and share a love of working with wood on a small scale. Their divergent intentions for their work reinforced by their stylistic choices confirm their individual voices despite their common materials and tools.
James Buxton
Born and raised in Riverbank, James has been sculpting all his life and has been carving for over 30 years. A self-taught carver James also works in steel, stone, and assemblage. Working out of the River Art Centre Studios, James also regularly teaches a variety of classes.
“I can’t stop making art – always have – and carving, working in 3 dimensions has always interested me. I am also a keen observer of nature and the habits and characteristics of birds. Carving the birds starts with selecting the right shaped block of wood, and carefully forming the body by paying very close attention to the unique characteristics of each species. Looking closely at the shapes inside the animal’s form, like the swell of the beak, tilt of the head, the pattern, shape and layers of feathers and all the other distinguishing characteristics that each bird has, I try to capture the natural stance of the bird. In the final colour, I strive for as great a verisimilitude as possible. Flock, 2020, on loan from the Public Art Collection of the Town of Florenceville-Bristol, is a collection of birds that are common to the Upper Saint John River Valley”. James Buxton
Artist James Buxton making Ash Baskets
“I love to work with my hands – can’t keep them still or stay in one place unless I am working on an art piece. I like to think that I am plagiarizing nature with my birds. Making them real”.
Francine Simard Levesque
Francine Simard Levesque is a self taught artist, born and raised in the northwestern part of New Brunswick. At a young age she was surrounded by artistic people who encouraged her to explore in every artistic discipline presented to her. Francine started to create with wood in 1985 and now concentrates on sculpture only.
“It is creating with the beauty of wood that makes me want to be an artist. When I find a piece of wood, I have no control over what I see. It is the spirit of the forest, of the trees that speak to me and that show me the human faces and animals I make. I try to keep that spirit alive in the sculpture. Every piece I make shares the forest spirit and carries the message “Keep the trees alive”, for the animals and for us.”
“The forest is a visualization of my feelings when in the solitude of the trees. It is the softness of the air and the smell of the leaves. It is the coarseness of the bark and the sounds of the animals. I feel it all. I am part of the forest and it is part of me.” Francine Simard Levesque
Francine at work in her studio
“En réalité, c’était la sculpture qui m’attirait. J’ai grandi à Edmundston et lorsque je me rendais à la cathédrale de l’Immaculée-Conception, j’étais fascinée par les sculptures et les détails. Je trouvais ça impressionnant. Lorsque j’ai appris qu’il y avait un groupe de sculpture à Grand-Sault, je me disais que j’irais rencontrer ces gens pour avoir des outils et je me suis mise à sculpter avec eux.”
Colin Smith
Colin Smith taught high school art, theatre, and English for 20 years. His work has been exhibited in galleries throughout NB and is included in public and private collections. For 11 years, his drawings and cartoons were featured weekly in the Salon section of the Telegraph Journal. He works out of his studio in the River Art Centre in downtown Florenceville-Bristol.
“I have always drawn. Several years ago, I decided my drawings did not look solid enough on the paper. So, I started carving, to figure out how to give my drawings a sense of weight. And it worked. It showed me some stuff about drawing, by making me look at it differently, and I grew to really enjoy carving.”
I work small. The shape of the wood generally determines what’s carved. Some of my whittlings look like residue from my distant ancestors. Some of them look a bit more modern. They are worked with knives, chisels, and axes, in a very unsophisticated way. I have found that every cut changes my idea of the project. I may start out with an idea, but the wood itself, by breaking and revealing its shapes and curls , keeps editing and suggesting. I never know how the little carvings will turn out, and that’s why I do them.
The Boat sculpture is the result of Jamie Buxton’s misbegotten attempt to pull me into the twentieth century. He showed me how to use rotary carvers, and The Boat is the result. It is a tribute to schools and to Carleton North High School, the building I spent the last twenty years in. It is an affectionate good bye to what I still think is the greatest, and most important, job in the world.” Colin Smith
Colin Smith
“Life inspires me. For years I drew people interacting, in supermarkets and streets. I drew high school kids, simultaneously terrified and deeply self-assured. And I drew thousands of cartoons, and published some of them in the Salon Section of the Telegraph Journal for a decade – historical, topical, linguistic – really anything but overtly political. I have a sketchbook with me always and I draw everything. It is, after all, a way of seeing.”

Owen Munisamy
2021-05-15 - 2021-07-03
Theme & VariationsThe exhibition includes watercolour and acrylic paintings created between 2016 and 2021. Born in a musical family in Liège, Belgium in 1987, Owen pursued his art studies in England where he obtained his BA (Honours) in Fine Art in 2011 from Winchester School of Art, Southampton University. In 2018 Owen and his family settled in Edmundston, NB.
“During my university studies, the professor suggested to us that we should seek inspiration from our homes, our family backgrounds and our surroundings. Coming from a musical family it was thus quite normal that I should look to music, especially to the sculptural forms of wood and brass instruments and their intricate mechanisms. My first years of painting were thus spent researching and gradually creating an enigmatic musical world with biomorphic forms of musical instruments [blended] with human elements [to create] a universe of extremely rich and varied forms which are organic and alive.”
Featured in the most recent edition of Created Here Magazine, Munisamy explores a form of abstraction that blends biological, suggestively human elements (which might remind you of the sculptures of British artists Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth) with the geometrical, hard-edged shapes of contemporary technology. In vivid and bold colour, Munisamy creates variations on a theme of collapsing and exploding spheres suspended on illusory planes, within expansive atmospheres and accompanied with surprising allusions to both art and the real world. At any point the artist’s imagery can transport us to the microscopic or to outer space. Another influence on the artist was Salvador Dali and if you can remember his famous melting clock, you are well on your way to envisioning Munisamy’s biomorphic inventions. Tree trunks, bicycle wheels, telescopes, lines, wedges, and the unexpected biological form can all be discovered in these enigmatic paintings
Owen’s diverse interests and influences include cartooning, Metaphysical and Surrealist painting. Bold colour contrasts, strong diagonals and areas of complexity contrasting with passages of delicate colour and light result in images that fuse technology with the human form.
“Likewise I have always been attracted to strip cartoons by the artists Enki Bilal (for his sombre atmospheres), Jean Giraud / Moebius (for his imagination and details) and Phillippe Druillet (for his dark backgrounds and very contrasting colours). Aldo Pomodoro and Anish Kapoor also inspired me, the first by his spheres with a complexity of details reflecting another world, the second by his voids that pull the viewer towards the interior. As de Chirico says: “Even that dreams are an inexplicable mystery but even more mysterious are the thoughts that converge to certain objects and aspects of life.
In parallel with my oil paintings I use watercolours. I employed that technique to start with as a means of research for my oil paintings. My watercolours are a long search from complex structures to now more delicate and sensitive paintings. My works are progressively becoming more architectural with fewer musical details. I am always engaged in creative research, always going forward, always evolving ….”

Kathy Tidswell
2021-05-15 10:30 - 2021-06-19 17:00 UTC
Colours of NatureKathy Tidswell has a long career of working with textiles in a variety of creative ways. Her materials include paint and dye, machine stitching, as well as cloth that is found or created. The artist identifies two areas of exploration in the artwork included in the exhibition: Wall Quilts and Thread Stitching. In both bodies of work, the artist continually turns to Nature for inspiration.
“I strive to recreate nature’s beauty realistically in my work. Often inspired by my own photographs, I use hand painted and commercial fabric to create a wall quilt or paint a scene on fabric and bring it to life using thread, working with a domestic sewing machine. The needle becomes my paintbrush as I move the fabric freely. While my artistic medium is primarily thread, my painted fabric backgrounds support the production of landscapes and life-like three dimensional images of birds, wildlife and portraits. My wish is to transport the viewer to a unique place, whether it is a forest stand, a beach delivering the glories of a morning sunrise, or a backyard hosting our joyous songbirds.
Trees are special to me and have always featured very much in my work. Perhaps I have been influenced by my years working for the Canadian Forestry Service or perhaps it is my love of texture and dimension. Whatever is the case, trees have offered me many inspirations.” Kathy Tidswell

Naturalis | Renata Britez
2021-06-26 10:30 - 2021-07-17 17:00 UTC
Renata Britez is a multidisciplinary emerging Canadian artist, originally from Brazil, who is currently based in Fredericton, NB. In 2020, she completed a degree in the NBCCD Textile Design Program and first brought her work to the Andrew & Laura McCain Art Gallery at Small Works 2018.
Naturalis demonstrates the diversity of her practice, her commitment to traditional techniques, ethics and sustainability in her production of materials as well as her artistic interest in working in both two and three dimensions. Subtle stories of her journeys in both art and life are paralleled in the mythic journeys and states she evokes though her sculptures and wearable art. Mothers, daughters, strife, survival, and conquest hint at the personal journey the artist embarked upon when she moved to Canada in 2014.
Persephone, a stylish garment of felted silk and wool, dyed the passionate red of Brazilwood, presents a sculpted and embroidered garden. Presented in a wearable form thick enough to warm and protect while referencing a myth of seasonal renewal and a mother-daughter story of compromise and lives lived at a distance.
Marked, two wall hangings whose subtle quilting describes the topography and streets of Fredericton, are coloured by detritus the artist collected on the ground. The works are re-presented acts of discovery, investigation and agency while making the reality of one’s choices “leaving its mark” tangible.
Marks and the act of mark making is evident throughout the art in the exhibition as is the colour palette, derived as it is from the actual colours of New Brunswick. Renata’s artistic training began here, and it appears that a key collaborator and muse has been the province of New Brunswick. Sourcing and creating natural dyes and paints for all that she creates, Renata starts each project literally at ground level.
Artist in Residence
Between June 14 and 26, 2021 Renata has been in Florenceville-Bristol for a residency at the River Art Centre to further her project called Maritime Colours (supported by a grant from ArtsNB). For this project Renata is researching, cataloging, and mapping pigments from plants and minerals found in the Atlantic Provinces of Canada. Supported by the New Brunswick Arts Board and the Andrew & Laura McCain Art Gallery Artist in Residence Programme, she is working on a series of paintings using natural pigments that are foraged and processed in Carleton County.
This programme is supported by the Carleton North Community Foundation.

Barbara Safran de Niverville
2021-07-10 - 2021-08-21
Vanitas by the Sea / Vanitas par la merBarbara Safran de Niverville explores the vigour of growth where native plants and garden escapees mingle. Discarded domestic objects punctuate intricate vegetation that seems to hover in the dark ground. The title of the exhibition references the still life genre of painting popular during the Baroque period in western art history. Vanitas portray highly realistic, symbolic objects such as flowers, porcelain and silver dishes, fruits and vegetables. Together on a tabletop, the objects are a reminder to the viewer of the hubris of mankind and the inevitability of mortality. Barbara has reinterpreted this point of view recognizing in her work the subtle influence of the present pandemic and its parallels to the plagues in Europe during 17th and 18th centuries. She has chosen to include objects in her work that are worn with use, but seem to possess an aura of their past significance while the shadow land they now inhabit evokes the mysterious resilience of the uncultivated growth found between a beach and a forest – abandoned land that survives in spite of humanity’s seeming indifference.
“Using a combination of natural and synthetic materials, my mixed-media panels represent a metaphor for the hybrid quality of the natural world. I question our concept of wilderness and reveal the flux between Nature and Culture and the tension between growth and decline. My current work explores outcast and forgotten areas of landscape that retain traces of human use. Essential to my process is experimentation, through digital photography, drawing, and the testing of new combinations of art techniques with industrial products”.
Vanitas Vivace is a short experimental video based on the painting Vanitas Chicory, on exhibit with this series. Elements from the painting leave the panel’s surface, become air born and dance to an original soundtrack. Barbara’s husband Peter de Niverville animated the film with music composed by their daughter, Abigail de Niverville. It is available to be viewed on Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/568608152/bb5d5ef7f8
A Prix Éloize finalist in 2018, Barbara has exhibited landscapes across Canada in twenty-six solo shows and numerous group projects in the United States and Iceland. In 2014, she completed her Masters of Fine Arts degree at the Art Institute of Boston.

Isolated // Together
2021-07-24 - 2021-08-21
Curated by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, fourteen New Brunswick artists have designed wearable facemasks as part of the project, Isolated // Together, commemorating the cultural impact of masks during this pandemic.

Currents
2021-08-28 - 2021-10-02
Deanna Musgrave and Amy Ash
The energy that passes through or between us, the memory of water, a pulse, a charge, a conduit, a body in motion, a cycle.
Currents links the recent work of Amy Ash and Deanna Musgrave through their shared interest in the poetics of water, memory and the unseen. Quiet explorations of biofields, sensation, and connection resonate from the works that comprise Currents. Watermarks and brushstrokes become tidelines, evidence of time and transformation brought on by an interaction of forces.
Through conduits of both representational form and abstract composition the artists encourage reflection, interaction, and personal change. Both Ash and Musgrave work fluidly between dedicated studio practices and social engagement. While Ash creates opportunities for collaboration and shared meaning-making as an act of collective care, Musgrave works with individuals through energy healing techniques.
Together, through diverse embodied methodologies, Ash and Musgrave hold space for connection, reparation, and transformation.
Amy Ash
Amy Ash is an interdisciplinary artist engaged with collective care through processes of shared meaning-making. Her practice flows from curatorial projects and writing to teach-ing, socially engaged action, and hands-on making. Blurring the lines between disciplines, they trace connectivity through the intersections and overlaps between memory, learning, and wonder, to incite curiosity. Amy has exhibited and curated programmes internationally, with projects commissioned by National Gallery London (UK), The NB International Sculpture Symposium (NB), Beaverbrook Art Gallery (NB), and Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts (MB). She is an instructor with the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, writes regularly for CreatedHere Magazine, Visual Arts News, and is a member of the International Associ-ation of Art Critics. Amy lives in Menahqesk/Menagoesg/Saint John, New Brunswick, with her wife Alex, along with their dog and cat. Of settler ancestry, they are a grateful guest on the unsurren-dered and unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik, Mi’kmaq, and Peskotomuhkati peoples. www.amyash.ca @amy_ash_ Pronouns: She/They can be used interchangeably. I have no preference.
Deanna Musgrave
“Musgrave’s work has been a fixture in the Saint John and New Brunswick art community for over a decade. Her paintings are immediately recognizable; ethereal and vibrant, they encapsulate traits that many artists struggle to balance. They are objectively beautiful yet wrought with complex symbolism and capture a narrative while remaining vehemently abstract.” ~Christiana Myers, “Peer Review: The Best Art of 2018,” The East, December 2018

Deanna Musgrave is best known for her large-scale public artwork such as, “Cloud” (2015) and “Tropos” (2019) whichare both over 40’ wide and part of the collection of the University of New Brunswick. Her works inspire contemplation and are a response to her endless seeking of the unseen, metaphysical and mysterious.
Early on in her career, she was selected by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in 2007 for the Studio Watch Award which aimed at introducing promising new artists to the public and later included in “Off the Grid: Abstract Art in New Brunswick” at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in 2014. Her work has been enthusiastically reviewed by the New Brunswick media, and she has won numerous grants and awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, New Brunswick Arts Board, Mount Allison University and the University of New Brunswick. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Mount Allison University (2005) and a Master of Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of New Brunswick (2019). Outside of her artmaking, she works in guidance through hypnosis, energy clearing and other mysterious practices to assist. She is based out of Menagoesg (Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada).
Artist Statement – Deanna Musgrave“For visual artist Deanna Musgrave, art and healing are interwoven. This is why, transformation is the crux of her work and the reason she found home in Saint John, [New Brunswick], a historic working-class city on the Bay of Fundy. This place possesses energy she describes as having “an ancient quality that brings together polarity.” It is polarities that inhabit Deanna’s vision. Her work is an interaction that seeks unity, exuding energy in the process, much like the current transformative renaissance happening here in the old port city.” (1)
“[Her] work has been a fixture in the Saint John and New Brunswick art community for over a decade. Her paintings are immediately recognizable; ethereal and vibrant, they encapsulate traits that many artists struggle to balance. They are objectively beautiful yet wrought with complex symbolism and capture a narrative while remaining vehemently abstract.” (2)
“Often working on the studio floor, using liquid paints to surround, unify and pool around areas of information, Musgrave succeeds in defying a traditional concept of perspective. Her compositions unfold almost three-dimensionally, enveloping the viewer with information from above, straight on and below.” (3)
“Water is the starting point for each of Musgrave’s works. With a blank canvas placed on the floor of her studio, she selects objects of significance: of sentimental, aesthetic, or symbolic meaning, to place on top of the canvas. She sprinkles, sprays, or pours water over the object to capture an impression of the form in pigment. The impression made by the water is like a memory of the object on the canvas.
Using water in the process is as important to Deanna as her subject matter. Her world view is closely tied to the power of water and its relationship to experience and memory. Deanna’s work considers and articulates the theories of homeopathy: the ability of water to remember substances once mixed in it; cymatics: the patterns formed when a substance like water or sand is vibrated; and akashic field theory: the theory that information can exist and be transmitted through energy fields.
The result is a highly dynamic and fluid expression of memory, story, and a deep connection to water. Outside of her art, Deanna studies and practices dowsing: practiced since the 15th century to locate underground water systems. More recently dowsing has been adapted to locate areas of stress or trauma on the human body as a means of healing.”
All aspects of Deanna’s connection to water speak to a single idea: that information, knowledge, and experience can exist and be transmitted in many different ways. She believes that revolution can be ignited from person to person and that can happen in many different forms.” (4)

~Shannon Webb-Campbell, “Arts Higher State: The Vision and Practice of Deanna Musgrave, Created Here Magazine: Psyche, Volume 11, 2020.
~Christiana Myers, “Peer Review: The Best Art of 2018,” The East, December 2018
~Stephanie Buhmann, “New Brunswick Studio Conversations,” Billie Magazine V.2, Spring 2017
~Donna Wawzonek, “Deanna Musgrave: Stirring Large Conversations with Grande Impressions,” National Water Centre Blog

Artist Statement – Amy AshMemoryscape I, 2021:
Sometimes the important places in our lives can define us as much as the people with whom we find kinship. As much as we inhabit places, so do they hold a special spot, a resonance, within us. Specific landscapes, eco-systems, architecture, or townships can feel like a visceral extension of ones self. The attachment could be micro, macro, sensorial, drenched in memory, or exist within a dream—maybe you’ve been there a hundred times, maybe you have yet to visit.
Many thanks to those community members who heeded the call, contributed a photograph that helped Amy Ash build the collage included in this exhibition.
“The series Mettle uses copper as both a key material in the work and allegory—its material qualities becoming symbolic of resilience. Copper is a super-conductor of electricity, and the stan-dard by which all other conductivity is measured. Within my practice it has become a conductor of meaning. Copper is a memory shape alloy. It will always ‘remember’ its orig-inal form, and, when pressurized, will invariably revert to its original shape. Copper is also within our biological make-up, closely linked to memory dysfunction. When threatened by the elements, copper will produce a patina, or verdigris. This greenish tarnish acts as a weather buffer to preserve the integrity of the copper below its surface—an exquisite cop-ing mechanism. By adding copper sulphate crystals both to the metal’s surface and the paint’s pigment, the crystals continue to grow and morph as they respond to the climate, a metaphor for personal transformation brought on by external forces.” Amy Ash
“Touching Visions is an exploration of the body as an archive of sensation, experience, and action. The work is created through repetitive labour-intensive and experiential means, such as stitching, documenting performative actions, recording my body in plaster and my voice in looped improvised song. It marks the first time I have used my own image in my work.” Amy Ash

Irene Tompkins: Bouquets and flowers
2021-10-09 - 2021-11-13
A celebration of watercolour paintings by Carleton County artist Irene Tompkins.

Alanna Baird
2022-02-05 - 2022-04-16
Radial SymmetriesThis work revolves around the Pentaradial symmetry of a Sea Urchin shell. Pentaradial being a five sectioned symmetry found in nature that revolves around a central point. The simplest example being the Starfish and its five legs. Alanna Baird has been exploring this patterning through several different mediums and dimensions. The printmaking is often her initial exploration in surface patterns.
Thanks to funding through ArtsNB, I was able to create a body of work in lost wax cast bronze. Using some of my own ceramic work from the 1990’s as forms, I cast wax into these shapes and then altered the wax by cutting holes; exploring the symmetry as well as the strength of this new-to-me material. The bronze was cast in a foundry in Quebec, but the chasing (grinding of sprues and polishing of surface metal) and patination (colour) completed in Alanna’s studio.
The Calligraphic sculpture in plastic represents a second ArtsNB grant funded project. The initial intent was to use 3D printing to change the scale of my work. Computer design is not something I enjoy, the hands on fabrication of things is what I love. I became fascinated with a hand held 3D pen, and the clear plastic it could extrude. Light and air flowing through this new body of work, shadows cast. Although the plastic in the exhibition is too fragile to sell, I intend to work farther in this technique.
I am inspired by what I find on my daily walks on the sea floor, the inter tidal zone of the Bay of Fundy reveals it’s treasure to me. Treasure to me is not gold coins, but rather glimpses of things that catch my eye. Part historical – pipe stems, china shards, even stone weapons of a very early age, and part natural environment – resident as well as invasive species included. Often fragments, shells with their interiors exposed, sea urchin shell pieces which reveal the complexity of their “construction”.
I am a materials based artist. I enjoy exploring the material I have to work with. Mastering techniques, learning how to work with it, what it’s limits are, figuring out what I can do with it. I often work with recycled materials. Invasive species like the Lionfish have entered my view. I am currently working on a printmaking project involving the Golden Star Tunicate, an invasive species along this coastline. – Alanna Baird
Curated by Brigitte Clavette and Jennifer Stead.
Meet Alanna
Saturday, April 16, 2-4 pm at the Gallery

With the Grain: Carving Students' Show
2022-04-23 - 2022-05-21
Marty by Max Hutchison
James Buxton has been teaching carving classes at the River Art Centre for many years. His students have created many beautiful works that we look forward to sharing with you.
Featured carvers include: Lloyd Borowski, Paul Dean, Arline Gordon, Wendy Hall, Susanne Hansen, Max Hutchison, Roseanne Hutchison, Bessie Nicholson Langille, Mark McCauley, Judy McGuire, Scott O’Brien, and Rudy Stocek
Opening
Saturday, April 23
2-4 pm
Introductions at 2:30 pm

Frank Allison: Paintings and Drawings
2022-04-23 - 2022-05-21
Born in Saint John, N.B., Frank Allison (1883-1951) studied painting under Wilfred Molson Barnes and Maurice Galbraith Cullen at the Art Association in Montreal; John F. Carlson, Woodstock, New York; George Elmer Browne in Europe. He worked for the Bank of Montreal in Saint John, and by 1906 had transferred to Ontario and Montreal. He traveled extensively and found his subjects in many countries. Toward the end of WWI, he was working for the Bank in London England and was closely associated with Canadian painter James Wilson Morrice. Although he painted a variety of subjects, he had a special interest in architecture and is perhaps best known for his watercolours.
Peter Larocque, Curator at the New Brunswick Museum has observed that Allison is remembered for his impressionist-inspired landscapes filled with light, mood and atmosphere, and his accomplished watercolours, which show his technical mastery of this very demanding medium.
Watercolour painting has always been appreciated by artists for its portability and in the 19th century in Europe, when landscape subjects were favoured by many artists, art exhibitions displayed comparable numbers of watercolours and oils. However, by the turn of the 20th century, this ratio changed so that the number of watercolours submitted for exhibitions declined rapidly. In 1925 when the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour formed, the medium received renewed interest, regaining some of the stature it had lost.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the Canadian art scene in central Canada was focused on the Group of Seven and the idea of a unique “Canadian” art. The Maritimes, however, held strong ties to New England and Great Britain, and so it was within this tradition that Allison found himself.
Allison exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy exhibitions between 1915 and 1941; at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Spring Shows between 1915 and 1939 and was a life member of the American Water Colour Society. Among his solo shows during his career was one for his watercolours at the T. Eaton Company Gallery in Montreal in November of 1933 when The Montreal Star critic noted, “Mr. Allison’s subjects are principally the streets and buildings of old towns and, more particularly, towns in the south of Europe. The pictures are mostly large watercolours, painted with much breadth and freedom, full of the gay colour and sunlight of places in Spain, Italy, southern France and Morocco.”
Allison’s art is represented in the collections of Mount Allison University, Sackville, N.B.; Y.W.C.A., Saint John, N.B.; New Brunswick Museum, Saint John; City of Saint John, N.B.; Milliken University, Decatur, IL.; Decatur Inst. of Civic Art; Art Inst., Springfield, IL.; and many private collections. His niece, Mrs. Doreen (Allison) Tuomola of Toronto has kindly loaned her collection for this exhibition.

Closing November 8, 2022: Call for Exhibition Proposals for 2023-2024 seasons
2022-04-30 08:00 - 2022-11-08 17:00 (America/Halifax)
Update: Thank you for your submissions. The Selection Committee has been delayed. We will be in contact after selections have been made.
Contemporary professional artists and curators with a proposal are invited to apply.
https://mccainartgallery.com/artists/

Suzanne Hill: Hands of the Horsemen
2022-07-16 - 2022-08-27
Opening: July 16, 2-4 pm. Introductions and artist talk at 2:30 pm. All welcome.

Hands of the Horsemen brings together works from different periods of the artist’s long career. Loaned from the collections of the New Brunswick Museum, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, private collectors and the artist’s studio, this exhibition places the artist’s most recent work in the context of 20 years of her art and confirms her continued interest in the androgynous and anonymous figure.
Always creating a subtle and evocative space from the surface area upon which she works, Hill’s figures seem to be extracted, scratched, pasted, torn or collaged into being. In exquisite contrast with her very direct method of working, her figures are delicately suspended, poised in time and motion. They are figurative gestures that have agency and exist with consequence. Hill’s figures seem to metaphorically struggle with the singularity of experience, wrestling as does the artist with existential questions while formally engaging with a line, an edge, a frame or their own shadow. When writing about the body of work, Singular from the mid 2000s, Peter Larocque observed that “while we may live in social situations and may interact, to lesser or great degrees with others, ultimately, we remain as parallel singularities delineated by the borders of our own perception and will”.
Suzanne Hill lives in Rothesay, N.B. A graduate of Mount Allison and McGill Universities, she has exhibited nationally and internationally. For many years she taught art in the public Schools in Saint John. Her work has been the inspiration for cross disciplinary creative productions with poet Ann Compton and the Atlantic Ballet. Hill has worked tirelessly for the advancement of the visual arts and has had a significant voice in the cultural affairs of the province. She has served on the Artsnb Board, the Board of Directors of the NB Museum, and the Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation. She was the 1999 recipient of the SHMF Strathbutler Award, and 2016 recipient of the NB Lieutenant-Governor General’s Award. Her art is in the New Brunswick Art Bank, the Canada Council Art Bank, UNB, NB Museum, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the University of Maine, the Governor General of Canada, the Canadian War Museum and the Department of External Affairs. Recent exhibitions include Unstable Boundaries, 2019, Spicer/Merrifield Gallery, The Work Before, 2021, Sunbury Shores Art and Nature Centre and the Saint John Airport.
Suzanne Hill will give an artist talk at 2:30 pm on July 16, 2022 accompanied by her long time gallery dealer and friend, Peter Buckland. Everyone is welcome – Admission is free – refreshments will be served.

Shared Shots: A Community Photography Show
2022-09-03 - 2022-10-01
The Opening will be on Saturday September 3, 2022 from 2 – 4 pm
Introductions at 2:30
All welcome

Made possible through the generous support of the

Miniature Worlds - Sara Brinkhurst
2022-09-03 - 2022-10-01
What is the fascination with the world of miniatures? There is something so compelling about tiny objects – not just the skill involved in making something so small and detailed, but the complete uselessness of them determines them as objects of desire for purely ornamental reasons. The possibility to make or own a tiny piece of furniture or art that we would never normally have room for, or possibly afford, allows us to create our own perfect worlds. Worlds that can be packed up and fit in one box!
After retiring in 2021, I revisited an old hobby. Exploring and unpacking boxes of minis that I had collected over the years brought back a rush of desire to start creating again. These pieces are the results of explorations into different scales and effects, ranging from 1:12 to 1:144 (a dollhouse for a dolls house). Some contain a mixture of made and bought items (many of which have been adapted); others contain all original items made by my own hand using wood, metals, fabrics, clays, paint and a lot of glue!

Sara Brinkhurst
Born in England, Sara graduated from the University College for the Creative Arts in Kent. She won several competitions and awards before graduating with a BA First Class Honours in Silver/Gold Smithing and Jewellery Design in 2007.
She emigrated to Canada in 2008, where she has continued to explore creative pursuits. These include working in precious metals, theatre costume design and making, writing and anything else that involves research and hand skills. After retiring as Director of Sunbury Shores Arts & Nature Centre in 2021, she revisited a life-long passion for miniatures. Inspiration to finish some old projects quickly led to the creation of several new explorations in the world of mini. Sara is a Juried Member of the Nova Scotia Designer Crafts Council and Craft New Brunswick.
Artist Statement
My journey through the mini world started when I was around 10. I loved finding small objects and turning them into something else, and could spend hours making little pieces of furniture or accessories – from toothpaste cap vases, to string-framed paintings, to toothpick and jam jar lid tables. I have always enjoyed researching history around furnishings, clothing, household objects and living styles. As an adult, a degree in jewellery design and making vastly improved my hand skills. Finally all these elements have come together to allow me to create and build as I have always been driven too. The focus required to work at this scale is all engrossing and addictive. For me, it is playing at its finest – and an escape to fascinating little worlds where anything can happen.

Violet A. Gillett: Fine Art and Original Craft
2022-10-08 - 2022-11-12
“My aims – what they are – are not perhaps high. I do not think of my art works – as it seems is the fashion nowadays – as having a socially significant message – unless [it is] in trying to tell in my work, of beauty I have felt or observed, and so to bring it to the attention of others, [so it] does good to mankind and has some social value. If what I have said in my art, or have fostered in my teaching, carries into the world a sense of greater happiness and beauty in my day, then all my aims will be gratified.”
Violet Gillett
Opening and Book Launch
Saturday, October 8, 2-4 pm at the Gallery
Violet A. Gillett, Painting With Words
Artist, Author and Educator
Author JoAnne Rivers, in collaboration with all the descendants of Violet Gillett, has penned a life story
about this important, multi-talented Maritimer that will kindle a glorious and lasting impression for everyone.
“A number of accolades, including becoming a Member of the Order of Canada in 1976, reflects the great esteem in
which both she and her work were held over the course of an active, influential, and distinguished career. Ultimately, Vi Gillett’s hard work and quiet determination fundamentally reshaped art in New Brunswick; a remarkable
accomplishment and enduring legacy.”
Peter J. Larocque Art Curator, New Brunswick Museum
As the founding director of Fine Art at the Saint John Vocational School, Gillett gave influential guidance to young Fred Ross and many others. With Walter Abell and Miller Brittain she was a pivotal force in the Maritime Push. Upon
retirement Violet Gillett returned to her family home in Perth-Andover, New Brunswick where, with her sister Beatrice Rivers they developed a highly successful arts and crafts business catering to visitors from across Canada and the United States. Little has been written about this East Coast renaissance artist. “Painting With Words” tells the inspirational story, from her childhood memories arriving at Market Slip in Saint John in 1909, her early employment with Banting and Best at the time of their insulin discovery, through the many, and variety of artworks she created – even after losing her sight. By combining personal correspondence with published stories from the Atlantic Advocate and a generous collection of images, Painting With Words chronicles a life well lived. For those who know Violet Gillett’s work, this book will enhance their appreciation of her life’s many accomplishments. For those meeting her for the first time, many delightful and surprising encounters await within this book’s covers. JoAnne Rivers

Tell me a Story: Five Acadian Artists
2023-06-03 10:30 - 2023-07-22 17:00 (America/Halifax) | Andrew & Laura McCain Art Gallery, 8 McCain Street, Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick, E7L 3H6, Canada
The Andrew & Laura McCain Art Gallery is full of spring colour and summer joy this month as the exhibition of five renowned and celebrated Acadian artists – one sculptor and four painters – share their art with our community. The art works are on loan to the gallery through their art dealer, Daniel Chaisson, of the gallery ART/ARTIST in Dieppe. From the playful descriptions of life on the Acadian shore in the work of Yvon Gallant, to the vibrant dynamism of the palette knife abstractions by Louise LeBlanc, stories abound in the art of these five artists. Together their narratives explore and describe humorous moments, acknowledge history, ephemeral states, balancing acts and decisive moments. The power and impact of colour, textures and gesture are vital means of expression for the artists, whether they are investigating their world, their imagination or their process. The only sculptor in the show, Marie Hélène Allain,most famous for her monumental stone works, is presenting six sculptures from a series of 35, that are assembled from rock, alder wood, copper and bronze. Tall, figure-like constructions, acknowledge the history of the alder tree in the development of Acadian society while talking about her faith and the place of the individual in community.
6.G.Goguen_Fond_orange_ligne_bleueGeorge Goguen Louise LeBlanc, Cndn, UP_TIMIST, Sans titre #1, 2020, oil on canvas11.Y.Gallant_Drapeaux_en_berne2.M.Parent_Ce_long_voyage_a_l’interieur17.M.H.Allain_Altruisme

Napoigagenn: Brian Francis, Tara Francis, Starlit Simon
2023-09-16 10:30 - 2023-10-14 17:00 (America/Halifax)
Brian Francis
Author, Poet, Photographer, Director-Producer Brian Francis of Elsipogtog First Nation is painting his visions, dream images that come to him and he is compelled to embody them with paint. Well known as an international award winning filmmaker and musical entrepreneur, he has produced, directed and has written over 70 award winning documentaries. Most recently Brian released his first book, Between Two Worlds- Spiritual Writings and Photographs.
“I think my work in The Sacred Space goes beyond being Indigenous or non-Indigenous. It goes deeper into the heart of who
we all are as people. It goes beyond historical and political rhetoric, it isn’t about Indigenous rights or Native politics. My artwork serves
to unite ancient souls that dwell within all of us that oftentimes get bogged down by daily stresses of life, regardless of who we are as people. The ancestorial space that is occupied by the ones who were here before us ,It is up to us to acknowledge and honour them and it is where we must seek guidance whilst here in this plane. The Sacred Space is within our hearts a place we often forget to look when we seek answer. Perhaps the lesson in that may be that we may be afraid of what it is we will find when we look deep within the confines of our souls. But reality is , these are the answers we need.”
Tara Francis

“My work is a form of prayer, and it’s healing for me just in the very act of doing it,” says Tara Francis, a contemporary Mi’kmaw artist from the Elsipogtog First Nation, now based in Shediac, N.B.
“A youthful portrait taken from a black and white photo of my Maternal Grandmother Lucretia McLaughlin. This is one of two portraits I have created, the first being a portrait of my Paternal Grandmother Louise Francis. (which is now part of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery’s permanent collection) The stories of these women’s lives and the legacy of their dedication and nurturing kindness to their families and communities are truly an inspiration.
I grew up next door to my Granny Lucretia and it was her support and encouragement that led me to pursue a career in art. These portraits are part of a series entitled That Which has Shaped me. Made possible in part by a Creation Grant from ArtsNB.

Starlit Simon
Starlit Simon is Mi’kmaw from Elsipogtog First Nation and a full-time PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick in the Faculty of Education. She can often be found highway hunting for porcupine roadkill where she harvests the porcupine quills to create her art. “As I continue through the process of research and academia, I am often grappling with myself, my Indigenous world view, my Mi’kmaq language, and with the western world view and the English language. It often takes me a significant amount of time to operate and understand how to walk, work and communicate in the western world, because when I do, I abandon who I am at my core, a Mi’kmaq woman from Elsipogtog [The River of Fire]. This art piece is symbolic of that internal struggle that many Indigenous scholars can attest to also feeling, not just in their graduate studies but throughout their undergrads and in high schools as well. This piece is a reminder that there is a way to apply two eyed seeing as is the term that was in our language and world view from very long ago. Where you walk with one foot in both worlds. “, Starlit Simon.

Brigitte Clavette: The Mysterious Soul of Objects
2023-10-21 - 2023-11-18
Opening celebrations of The Mysterious Soul of Objects scheduled 10 November 2023, 5 – 7 pm

The artworks in The Mysterious Soul of Objects are from a series created over the past few years under the name of “futile abundance”. “I cast in sterling silver or bronze discarded foodstuff, found animal parts, and along with these I hammer or “raise” small vessel forms that I call skins. These become the palette or inventory that I use to create still lives or tableaux that invite the gourmand to the table. I am interested in the tension between attraction and repulsion. These platters or tableaux give a living space to the mysterious objects I create. Objects whose function is not always clear. Objects that invite the viewer for some kind of connection or communion. These objects may invite contemplation or curiosity”. Brigitte Clavette
Head of Jewellery and Metal Arts, and an instructor at the New Brunswick College of Art and Design from 1985 to 2017, Brigitte Clavette currently teaches part-time and devotes herself to her artistic practice. She is the 2022 winner of the Governor General Saidye Bronfman Award for excellence in fine crafts, and is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts. She received the Excellence Award and the Strathbutler Award from the Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation of New Brunswick in 2006. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, The Victoria & Albert Museum, London England, the New Brunswick Museum, Saint John as well as being included in the contemporary silversmithing collection of the Art Gallery of Guelph, Ontario

Mel Hamilton: Reframing Perspectives
2023-10-21 - 2023-11-18
Opening celebration: Friday, 10 November 2023 5 – 7 pm.

Reframing Perspective is about creating work from an authentic female experience. My previous furniture work was informed by the male woodworking perspective shown in books exhibitions and other collections. I was taught that woven elements were used to add comfort. For this body of work I purposely looked to women for design inspiration and to reclaim the use of soft sculptural materials.
Over 100 years ago Annie Albers, Benita Otte, Gunta Stolzl and Otte Berger were weaving students at the Bauhaus in Germany. Their use of pattern, color and commitment to experimentation pave the way for Modern Art and Design. Works by these four artists directly inspired each piece in this series.
Weaving techniques and designs have been reimagined here in three-dimensional furniture pieces where the wood structures support the patterns and lines of soft material. These works illustrate the dynamic motion of a woven line and show that material can have both a physical and emotional weight.
Melanie Hamilton is an Atlantic Canadian craftsperson in visual artist. She specializes in finely crafted objects using solid wood and woven materials she studied at the center for furniture craftsmanship in Maine and Sheridan College in Ontario. She also holds a fine arts degree from Mount Allison University majoring in photography. Wooden leg Studio has been featured in such Publications as Home and Cabin, East Coast Living, Popular Woodworking and Canadian Woodworking.

Shadows and Tall Trees, Stephen Hutchings
2024-05-25 08:00 - 2024-07-06 17:00 (America/Halifax)
Opening 31 May, 2024 from 5-7 pm
Artist Stephen Hutchings will give a talk starting at 5:15 about his art practice and answer questions about the work in the gallery. Everyone is welcome, admission is always free and refreshments will be served.
Artist statement
My landscape paintings and drawings and prints are, in equal measures, both objective and subjective: they not only describe the world I know, but they also describe the world as I want it to be. I combine a resemblance to the external world we live in with the inner world of my emotions, my expectations and my hopes.
In my work, I engage with ideas about personal identity, mystery, revelation, and the infinite. Areas of rich dark are combined with areas of intense light, playing off of each other, acting as larger metaphors that refer to both ourselves, (as individuals and as part of a society) as well as to the world around us.
This exhibition brings together recent and new work representing a range of subjects, from trees to clouds, as well as extremes of sizes: Theatre of Trees is massive at 8’ x 40’ while the four Ghost Tree paintings are much more intimate at 12” x 12” each. Stephen Hutchings

Working With Clay: McCullough, Wood, Valiñas
2024-07-13 10:30 - 2024-08-10 17:00 (America/Halifax)
The Andrew & Laura McCain Art Gallery is pleased to be hosting an exhibition of works from New Brunswick ceramicists Andrew McCullough, Michael Wood, and Elsa Valiñas.
Their exhibition will be concurrent with an exhibition of the paintings of Ted Michener.
The Opening will be on July 13, 2024, 2-4 pm. The artists will be in attendance & introductions start at 2:30.
Everyone is welcome, admission is free and there is an elevator.
Artist Statements
Andrew McCullough
As a potter, I capture the magical possibilities of working with clay by using contrasting elements of striking modern designs and the raw natural qualities of the material. For me, my pieces to act as a time capsule, sharing with others a little bit about me and the how I see the world.
