Andrew and Laura McCain Art Gallery

Terry Perkins: A Retrospective
2018-07-07 10:30 - 2018-08-04 17:00 UTC | New Brunswick
Opening 7 July 2018, 2-4 pm
Sponsors for the exhibition include:
Carleton County Toy Run, Carleton Enterprises, Catherine and Paul Giberson, Alden Henderson
John Lang, Philip Lang, Langs Lodge, Outback Joe’s, Ann Marie, Nicole and Jason Perkins
Terry Perkins’ art evolved and changed over the years, but the consistent theme that is evident throughout this exhibition is his love for the landscape, heritage and life as he knew it in Carleton County, New Brunswick. He lived and worked in Florenceville-Bristol and is well know in the community as the artist who painted the mural which hung outside the co-op for over 20 years. He attended George Brown college in Toronto in the early 1980s to learn the art of sign painting and maintained a studio practice throughout his adult life. His interests and styles developed and changed over the years and the gallery is fortunate to be able to include his first painting and drawing, as well as the last painting, River, which was literally taken from his easel for the exhibition. Terry was a motor cycle enthusiast and as president of the Toy Run he painted many bikes and helmets for other bikers over the years. Included in the exhibition is one of his air brushed gas tanks and some studies that he used to paint his fellow bikers’ bikes.

Side Show: William Forrestall - Recycled and Reused
2018-07-07 10:30 - 2018-08-04 17:00 UTC
Opening 7 July 2018, 2-4 pm
The July 2018 Side Show features two of William Forrestall’s unique kinetic sculptures developed within the format of working peddle cars.
Forrestall has developed his own unique approach to exploring kinetic aesthetics and intuitive structures developed from recycled materials. His cars are made from recycled and reused materials including off-cuts, recycled bicycle parts, old chairs, construction materials and anything else that can be put to use.
From the work of Los Angles based Chris Burden’s creation of his B car, Don Potts purely aesthetic yet functional vehicles to the 2007 Sobeys Award winner Michel de Broin’s transformation of a standard car to a human powered vehicle, the art world offers many examples of artists exploring the potential of functional vehicles as an art form.
William Forrestall will be giving a kinetic car summer art camp for ages 8 – 88 at the River Art Centre Studios to encourage a wider community involvement and exploration of the vehicle motif. Please call the Gallery to register for the class which runs August 7 – 10, 2018. Spaces are limited.

NB Art Bank 2017-2018 Acquisitions
2018-08-11 08:00 - 2018-09-08 17:00 UTC
Every year the Province of New Brunswick acquires art from contemporary, practicing artists in New Brunswick to build the provincial collection.
Join us this year starting August 11, 2018 to discover artists from all over the province and see what they have been working on in their studios.
Opening August 11, 2018, 2-4 pm.
“It was an affirming and insightful experience to work with the other jurors toward this selection of new works for the NB Art Bank. It was a challenging task, as there were many strong submissions to consider. Our final choices reflect a significant amount of discussion and rigorous debate, and are a testament to the high level of expertise in the arts in New Brunswick”
Janice Wright Cheney, juror.
“Building the Art Bank collection is an important activity for the arts within the province; it is an archive of creative history of which we can all be proud of”
Linda Rae Dornan, juror

Thomas Sparling: Grand Manan Watercolours
2018-09-15 10:30 - 2018-10-13 17:00 UTC
Thomas Sparling will attend the opening on 22 September 2018, 2-4 pm.
Thomas Sparling’s scenes of the coastal landscapes of Grand Manan Island capture the light, atmosphere and textures of the island with a bold and assured handling of his brush and paint. A resident of Saint Andrew’s New Brunswick in the warmer seasons, Sparling has been painting this landscape for many years and his strong ties to the region are evident in his art. His close observations of nature are described in watercolour with bold forms, deep colour and lively mark making which together foreground the abstract nature of representation.

CUBA CONTEMPORARY PRINTS
2018-09-15 10:30 - 2018-10-13 17:00 UTC
Opening 22 September 2018
Artists Danisbel Abad Lopez and Mauricis Reyes Aranda
along with the exhibition curator Robert Van de Peer will be in attendance at the opening.
The exhibition Cuba: Contemporary Prints is the result of a creative partnership between artists from Canada and Cuba. The bridging force has been master printmaker Robert Van de Peer. In residence during the summer at Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre’s Printshop in St Andrews, New Brunswick, Robert spends the winter in the printshop at the Taller Cultural Luis Diaz Eduardo in Santiago De Cuba.
“My part-time residence in Cuba over the past six years has given me the opportunity to teach non-toxic techniques in printmaking and form a close relationship with Cuban artists. Cuban printmakers are limited by the availability of materials, and the most common technique that is used is collagraph, a print made from a matrix of cardboard and glue. They have refined this process to a fine degree,” says Van De Peer. He described the Cuban printmakers’ creative ideas as often dream-like, romantic in many ways, and having a distinct echo of Africa, brought to the island through the early slave trade.
We are honoured to host this exhibition which, in itself, has been a collaborative effort between our sister galleries Sunbury Shores, the Saint John Art Centre and us. The Cuban printmakers are masters of invention using the materials that are available to them and the results are impressive.
Jennifer Stead
Executive Director

CONVERSATIONS
2018-10-20 - 2018-11-17
Craft NB Juried Member Biennale Exhibition
Curated by Vicky Lentz
This exhibition features the work of 21 New Brunswick artists, each exploring different interpretations of the exhibition title and theme. Conversations is but a small sample of the kinds of dialogue we take part in – between friends, family, within ourselves and between the artists and their materials, the art and the audience. The show features a rich and diverse range of media where the hand works in tandem with the mind. Each and every piece is unique and has its own story to tell.
sideshow: a conversation with Katrina, features the work of Katrina Isbill-Floyd, aka Bella McBride. Katrina is a skilled artisan who accidently found needle felting at a young age and ultimately turned it into her passion in life.

"What The Mirror Doesn't See" by Laura Roy plus "Portraits in Clay" by Alison MacNeil
2019-05-04 00:00 - 2019-06-01 00:00 UTC
Laura Roy
Until June 1st, the Gallery is presenting imaginative new needle work collectively titled “What the Mirror Doesn’t See” by Laura Roy. This very personal work in textiles and drawing explores the artist’s experience of living with chronic pain and presents poignant embroidered images, in which each stitch metaphorically mends, fixes and heals while representing a unique and personal journey.
After graduation from Carleton North High School, Laura went on to pursue visual art at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (now NSCAD University) for a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2012 and a Certificate in Design in 2016. Currently working primarily as a graphic artist, she is also a contributing designer and co-organizer of the annual NSCAD Wearable Art Show in Halifax. Her work will be included in the Marion McCain Exhibition of Contemporary Atlantic Art this fall at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton.

Alison MacNeil
Also on view in the Gallery through June 1st is a retrospective presentation of impressive work from sculptor Alison MacNeil, “Portraits in Clay”. Currently living in Nova Scotia, Alison has worked and taught internationally. Her art —portraits (including miniatures), sculpture, commemorative medals— has been recognized by important international institutions and galleries from the United Kingdom to British Columbia. Subjects have included Governor General Georges Vanier and author Timothy Findley.
She has taught extensively in Europe and Canada and her expertise in using the Bremen Method for sculptural portraits led to the publication of a book on the subject in 1996. A stroke three years ago was a setback for this talented artist but she overcame physical limitations and today works exclusively on miniature clay sculpture or, as she refers to them, “handheld” treasures.

"Pictus" by Jared Betts plus "The Lost City" by Ian MacEachern
2019-06-08 - 2019-07-06
Jared Betts
Pictus

Hailing from Moncton, Jared Betts’ expressionist, gestural paintings provide an immersive sensory experience. His work is included in numerous corporate and private collections in North America, Europe, China, Australia and even Iceland. He has exhibited in over 100 group and solo shows in cultural hotspots such as Paris, London and New York.
Using visual cues as a means of stimulating metaphysical sensation, Betts confides that his paintings “inhabit the space where consciousness descends into dream… I seek to examine this dream-like suppression of recognizable imagery and capture the visceral sensation that bubbles up from underneath.”
Ian MacEachern
The Lost City

Recording life in Canada’s oldest city through more than a thousand images, photographer Ian MacEachern witnessed the profound transformation of Saint John NB as it was buffeted by the forces of modernization during the 1960s. These photographs display extraordinary power in their honest depictions of fleeting moments and illustrate a certain raw humanity.
For a new large-format book, “The Lost City: Ian MacEachern’s Photographs of Saint John”, architectural and social historian John Leroux has selected 75 black-and-white photographs drawn from MacEachern’s exceptional archive and has written an accompanying essay that examines the effect of urban renewal on civic architecture, historic neighbourhoods and community structure. There may be lessons to be learned here.
This touring exhibition, on view through Saturday 6 July 2019 and sponsored by the Beaverbrook Gallery and the Canada Council for the Arts (among others), allows photography enthusiasts and community planning pundits alike to view dozens of archival prints that chronicle an urban way of life that has been largely forgotten until now.

Still and Not So Still by Francine Martin plus Daily Offerings by Charline Collette
2019-07-13 - 2019-08-03
This exhibition opens Saturday 13 July 2019 with a reception from 2-4pm; on view through 3 August 2019.

Charline Collette
Daily Offerings
Didn’t your mother used to hook? Rug-hooking is deeply set in the memory of most of New Brunswickers but these days adventurous fibre artists are using rug-hooking as a means of expression while remaining true to their roots.
ArtsNB has commented that “Some artists mix different materials and techniques and others like Charline Collette perpetuate the glorious tradition of figurative work.” With large-scale and sculptural pieces in this body of work, Colette uses an abstract approach, exploring the separation between the hooked surface and the images that are placed on them.
“I highlight domesticity and, by extension, society,” she says. “In the last two years, I have been challenging the perception of what rug-hooking is by changing the scale and materials.” Her themes are explored in different forms, whether by digital projection or paint on hooked panels, sculptural forms or dimensionally hooked pieces.

Francine Martin
Still and Not So Still
Francine Martin is from Edmunston NB and is a relative late-comer to the professional art scene. However, since her retirement from teaching in 2015, she has rapidly become recognized for her creative use of an Old Masters style known as chiaroscuro (kee·aa·ruh·skyur·ow) referring to the use of bold contrast between light and dark. Think classic works by artists like Rembrandt, da Vinci and Caravaggio.
Martin admits to a bit of a double personality due to growing up with a twin sister. She says it “defines my personality and is reflected in my work through the use of light and dark… I use the chiaroscuro technique in my still-life and landscape paintings, limiting my colour palette which is mainly greys with a touch of more vibrant colour. In these nuances I find a reflection of my personality that I seek to express.”
In a very short timespan, her work has been shown up and down the St John River Valley from the Banville-Pérusse Gallery in Edmundston to the Acanthus Gallery in Grand Falls and the Handworks Gallery in Saint John. Last year, she was selected for Making Waves, a fine art and craft show on Ministers Island near St Andrews.
Upcoming exhibitions
10 August-7 SeptemberDawn Steeves, paintingsMaria Doering, prints
14 September-12 OctoberA family group show with Anna Torma, David Zsako and Istvan Zsako: textile, sculpture, photography
19 October-16 November
Vicky Lentz, sculpture, painting, installation

August Exhibition: West Gallery Maria Doering Cells, Souls and Personalities
2019-08-10 - 2019-09-07
Opening 10 August 2019, 2-4 pm
Maria Doering’s exhibition, Cells, Souls and Personalities, asks many questions…
What would we find if we viewed our personalities, minds and souls through a microscope?
What does confidence, ambition or courage look like on a cellular level?
What is the cellular make up of a soul?
Our body and soul, together, make us who we are. If we could visualize the intangible mind and the physical vessel of our bodies, what would they look like?
Maria answers these questions in her imaginative, detailed and lacy linoleum reduction prints. The “Cells, Souls and Personalities” series of linocuts gives these intangibilities a voice and anchors them in the visible world.

August Exhibition: East Gallery Dawn Steeves Structures: An Exploration of Memory
2019-08-10 - 2019-09-07
Opening 10 August 2019, 2 – 4 pm
This work began in 2017 with a series of line drawings – today the series includes 233 drawings.
Out of those investigations Dawn developed this colourful and enigmatic work in watercolour, drawing and oil on canvas.
Continually engaged with the rules of painting, (line, shape, form, composition, colour and light), Dawn explores imaginary yet three dimensional structures, both architectural and ideological. Over in one corner of the gallery, a clothes line of oil studies taken from photographs taken by her grandfather of Dawn before the age of two, remind the viewer of the role memory plays in representational painting.

September Exhibition: GARDENS, BEASTS AND WARRIORS: Anna Torma, Istvan and David Zsako
2019-09-14 - 2019-10-12
The artists will speak at 2:30.
Everyone Welcome

Buttermilk Creek 2019
2019-09-14 09:00 - 14:00 UTC
Vendors: For more information please contact the Gallery
by phone at 506-392-6769 or email info@mccainartgallery.com
COLOUR RUN
starts @ 9 AM
Register @ the
McCain Barn
starting @ 8:30 am

Vicky Lentz
2019-10-19 - 2019-11-16
Vicky Lentz will speak October 19 at 2:30 pm.Everyone welcome.
Encountering the art of Vicky Lentz is to engage with work that is sourced from life and nature as much as it is from aesthetic traditions. Ideas of transcendence, feelings of reverence and an emphasis on process permeate Vicky’s practice. Her approach is exploratory, innovative and diverse as she moves fluidly between materials, mediums and approaches. In her art, everyday things like pop can tabs, plastics, sequins, bones, elastics, and glue are reconfigured through repetitive actions and accumulation, transformed from pedestrian trifles to ephemeral surfaces, agents of light and shadow, in effect becoming experiences as much as they are objects.

Congratulations, Vicky!
Vicky Lentz has been named a finalist finalist for the Prix Éloizes- Artist of the Year in Visual Arts for the exhibition, Deep Listening.
Posts from Vicky about the exhibition:
For the install: James Buxton, Gilles Pelletier and Stephen Hutchings
I would like to share the people behind my exhibition, Deep Listening, at The Andrew & Laura McCain Gallery in Florenceville, that is a finalist for the Prix Éloizes- Artist of the Year in Visual Arts.At the hanging of the show, you see- from left to right- James Buxton, Gilles Pelletier and Stephen Hutchings. A wood carver, a knife maker and an important NB painter, these three made sure that all the pieces made it onto the walls where I wanted them. They were patient, efficient and kind! A sincere note of appreciation to all three!Je veux partager les personnes derrière mon exposition, Écoute profonde, à l”ALMAG à Florenceville, qui est finaliste pour un Prix Éloizes- Artiste de l’année en arts visuels. A l’installation des oeuvres vous voyez- de gauche à droite- James Buxton, Gilles Pelletier et Stephen Hutchings. Ces trois-là ont fait un travail formidable! Un gros merci!
Support at the ALMAG for the educational programming and school visits.
Continuing to share the wonderful support that my exhibition, “Deep Listening”, had to be a finalist for the Prix Éloizes -Artist of the Year in the Visual Arts.
The Andrew & Laura McCain Art Gallery staff and volunteers developed a wonderful educational program around the exhibition and invited children from the local schools to participate. I know that you will understand the importance of their work with the school children. Thank you for introducing my work to the local youth!
Vicky also participated in the Isolated // Together exhibition at the Gallery in 2021.

Amanda Balestreri: New Work
2020-02-08 - 2020-03-14
Amanda BalestreriClosing celebration of the artist and her work on
March 14, 2020, 2 – 4 pm
The artist will talk about her work at 2:30 pm.
We look forward to seeing you for the first exhibition of the 2020 season.

Bernard Quintal
2020-02-08 - 2020-03-14
Rocking on St. Anne’s Bay, 2019
Bernard Quintal’s exhibit at The Andrew and Laura McCain Art Gallery from February 8-March 14, 2020 is a collection of works in watercolour, exploring the many shapes and colors of rocks, driftwood, seashells and vegetation found on maritime beaches. This is done in close-up view using an imaginary
magnifying glass.
Through his paintings, the artist wants to inspire the viewer to relive the joy of discovery and appreciate the beauty of our maritime beaches, to preseve the memory of a pristine beach and to inspire conservation for the future.
“As a child I was fascinated by the rocks on the Gaspesie and Maritime beaches because they represented treasures for me. I have been fortunate to have experienced clean and healthy beaches. The rugged rocky coasts battered by waves mark the passage of time and I want to paint their history. Rocks are the principal actors in my recent works with honored guests such as driftwood, seashells and local
vegetation. I study the shore with an imaginary magnifying glass and the result of my observations is what I want to replicate. I choose to detail my vision meticulously using watercolour as the medium”.

“As I paint the many shapes and colors of my subjects, I relive the joy of discovery and appreciate the beauty of maritime coastal beaches. Our shores are in peril and I worry about their future. Erosion from storms, flooding and rising sea
levels are constant threats. Plastics pollute our seashores. I hope that my works will motivate cleaning-up and protecting the beauty of our maritime beaches. My contribution as an artist is to preserve a memory of their presence”.

Bernard Quintal

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

Kids Art Camp II:Ages 6-8
2020-07-31 10:30 - 2020-08-01 12:00 UTC
SORRY, BOTH CAMPS SOLD OUT

Looking for a camp for your child?
Try the Card Board Mask Camp. It’s a fun art project that gets young artists working in 2 and 3 dimensions and is suitable for all ages.
August 25, 1 – 3 pm.

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.

Fall Workshops @ the RAC
2020-10-01 - 2020-11-30
October through December Programmes
Children’s Art Classes with instructor Susanne Hansen
October 24 – November 21, 2020, 120:00 am – noon, Children grades 4 – 8.

Craft a Japanese style paper box with instructor Meg Clark
October 30, 6:30 – 8:30 pm & October 31, 1:30 – 3:30 pm

Craft a paper photograph album for that seocial collection with instructor Meg Clark
November 7, 1:30 – 3:30 pm
For further information go to Programmes.

Beginners Carving with James Buxton: Carve a Chipmunk
November 20, 6:00 -8:30 pm & November 21, 1:30 – 4:30 pm
For further information go to Programmes page.

Friday Afternoonn Carving Class
This on-going class for experienced carvers meets regularily once a week on Friday afternoons.
With only four participants, there is lots of help and guidance available as needed for the students to develop their skills and work on self directed projects. There is currently one space available.

With thanks to the Carleton North Commmunity Foundation for their support for the visual arts programming at the Gallery
The Carleton North Community Foundation was launched in 2008 with a $2-million donation from The McCain Foundation as part of the celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of McCain Foods. The Foundation supports a variety of eligible organizations under categories such as Arts & Culture, Education, Beautification, Economic Development, Recreation, Health & Wellness and Environment. For more information visit the website at http://cncfdn.ca/

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

Kids Saturday Art Class
2020-10-24 10:00 - 2020-11-21 12:00 UTC
5 week Kids Art Class
Saturdays 10:00am – noon
October 24, 2020 – November 21, 2020
for children from Grade 4 – 8
@ the River Art Centre.

Artist Suzanne Hansen will lead
a fun and relaxed art class, introducing students
to a new artist each week.
Students will explore different materials, techniques and styles
while building skills and understanding.
The class will visit the Gallery to see the Art of the Book exhibition.

$75 , all materials included.
Call the Gallery to register @ 392-6769
Space is limited so register early

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
