Andrew and Laura McCain Art Gallery

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 Old derelict buildings, outdated machinery and changing modes of transportation – they are all relics of the past now splendidly littering our landscape as glowing reminders of their previous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

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

Crazy Quilting
2022-03-26 09:30 - 2022-03-27 16:00 (America/Halifax) | River Art Centre, 8746 Main St., Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick
Learn Victorian-style crazy quilting with Cat Candow. Piece together foundation fabric by hand, and then explore embroidery techniques to create a heavily embellished piece of crazy quilt.
Saturday, March 26, 9:30 am – 4 pm
Sunday, March 27, 1 – 4 pm
$60 + bring own sewing scissors and any special fabrics you may want to incorporate
Cat Candow

Raised in Germany under her grandmother’s sewing table, Cat took her first stitches at age 3, attempting to make pants for her Teddy. She learned to crochet and cross stitch around the same time as she learned to read and write, but with much more enthusiasm. She came to Canada as an exchange student and stayed to study Fashion Design at NBCCD, followed by three years in England, making theater costumes and studying hat making. As a multi-media textile artist, she loves to combine traditional techniques with up-cycled materials in unexpected ways and creating textures too tempting not to touch.

School's Out! Clay
2022-04-14 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Halifax) | River Art Centre, 8746 Main St., Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick
FULL, but taking a waiting list
Have fun with clay! Make pressed ornaments using clay and plants with Jenna Ross of Jenna’s Wheelhouse.
Ages 7-12
$25
Call the Gallery at 392-6769 or email info@mccainartgallery.com to register.
Enrolment is limited. No refunds for cancellations less than 7 days prior to the workshop.
Class will be held at the River Art Centre, 8746 Main Street, Florenceville-Bristol

Intro to Drawing
2022-04-14 18:00 - 2022-05-12 20:00 UTC | River Art Centre, 8746 Main St., Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick
Photo: JJ Ying via Unsplash
Three-part workshop with Jennifer Stead
April 14, April 21, and May 12, 6-8 pm
Cost: $75
In this introductory series, you will learn drawing basics including shading, observational skills and creating space, putting objects into context.
Space is limited. Contact the Gallery, 392-6769, or info@mccainartgallery.com to register.
Class will be held at the River Art Centre, 8746 Main Street, Florenceville-Bristol.
No refunds for cancellations less than 7 days prior to the workshop.

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.

Watercolour Painting on Yupo Paper
2022-04-23 10:00 - 16:00 (America/Halifax) | River Art Centre, 8746 Main St., Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick
Instructor: Cathie Johnson
Learn a new watercolour technique with instructor Cathie Johnson – abstract painting on Yupo paper (a non-absorbent polypropylene substrate). Each participant will complete 1-2 paintings during the workshop.
Class cost: $45
Class from 10 am – 4 pm with a lunch break from 12 – 1 pm.
Call the Gallery at 392-6769 or email info@mccainartgallery.com to register.
Enrolment is limited. No refunds for cancellations less than 7 days prior to the workshop.
Class will be held at the River Art Centre, 8746 Main Street, Florenceville-Bristol

Thread Painting Workshop
2022-04-24 09:30 - 16:00 UTC
Learn the basics of free motion embroidery or thread painting using your regular zigzag sewing machine. Lower the feed dogs and use your needle like a paint brush to create flowers, leaves, trees, weeds, ripples in water, etc. You can spend the entire day perfecting your stitches or start a small landscape. Information on design will also be discussed.
Kathy Tidswell combines painting on fabric with free motion machine embroidery to produce thread painted works of art. She also blends innovative and traditional techniques to create unique wall quilts and original wearable art. Nature is a large influence on her work and she strives for realism. Her pieces have been juried into Canadian Quilters’ Association National Juried Shows (winning two awards), Grand National Juried Exhibitions, Studio Art Quilt Associates regional shows and Ontario Network of Needleworkers Threadworks. Her work has been published nationally and internationally. Kathy teaches her methods throughout Canada and in Europe. In 2005, she was awarded Canadian Quilters’ Association Teacher of the Year.
Cost $50 plus supplies
Supply List

Zigzag sewing machine and its’ manual.
Darning foot.
New machine embroidery needles 75/11 or 90/14 if you are using rayon embroidery threads. Metallic or metafil needles if you want to use metallic threads.
7 inch to 10 inch slim (3/8″) wooden embroidery hoop. A regular hoop will NOT substitute. It is too wide to pass under the presser foot. If you don’t have one, slim hoops will be available to purchase from Kathy for $10.
You will be making samples of weeds, trees , flowers, texture in water etc. so bring threads in greens (several shades), browns, yellows, blues etc. If you have rayon embroidery and metallic threads in these colours, bring them, but it’s not necessary to purchase them especially for this class. Instead, bring threads from your stash in these colours.
Several squares of muslin or plain light cotton approx. 12 inches square and several pieces of stabilizer such as tear- away to back your pieces.
Scissors, pins, ruler etc. ie normal sewing kit.
If you plan to start the 5 inch by 7 inch landscape, you will need small pieces for sky, mountain and water.

River Art Centre, 8746 Main Street, Florenceville-Bristol
Space is limited. To register, call the Gallery, 392-6769.
Tidswell’s exhibit, Colours of Nature, was at the Gallery May 15 – June 19, 2021.

HUGE Charcoal Drawing
2022-04-24 13:00 - 16:00 (America/Halifax) | River Art Centre, 8746 Main St., Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick
Work with charcoal sticks and powder to make a huge charcoal image based on landscape photographs with Stephen Hutchings.
$35
This class is also being offered Sunday, March 20, 1-4 pm. This class (rescheduled from pARTicipate) is taking names for a waiting list.
Call 392-6769 or email info@mccainartgallery.com to register.

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/

Art Class for Kids with Susanne Hansen: Ages 7-9
2022-04-30 09:30 - 11:00 UTC
Ages 7-9
$20, Materials included
Explore ink blot and watercolour techniques with instructor Susanne Hansen.
Call the Gallery, 392-6769, or email info@mccainartgallery.com to register. Space is limited so register early!
No refunds for cancellations less than 7 days prior to the workshop.
Class will be held at the River Art Centre, 8746 Main Street, Florenceville-Bristol.

Saturday Art Workshop with Susanne Hansen: Ages 10-14
2022-04-30 13:00 - 15:00 UTC | River Art Centre, 8746 Main St., Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick
Ages 10-14
$25, Materials included
Explore ink blot and watercolour techniques with instructor Susanne Hansen.

Call the Gallery, 392-6769, or email info@mccainartgallery.com to register. Space is limited so register early!
No refunds for cancellations less than 7 days prior to the workshop.
Class will be held at the River Art Centre, 8746 Main Street, Florenceville-Bristol.

Schools' Out STEM! Paper Circuit Cards
2022-05-06 10:00 - 12:00 UTC | River Art Centre, 8746 Main St., Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick
Be creative making paper circuit cards (perhaps for Mother’s Day) while learning about electricity.
Ages 7-12
$25
Call the Gallery at 392-6769 or email info@mccainartgallery.com to register.
Enrolment is limited. No refunds for cancellations less than 7 days prior to the workshop.
Class will be held at the River Art Centre, 8746 Main Street, Florenceville-Bristol

Printers Inc.
2022-05-28 - 2022-07-09
An exhibition featuring prints by Amy Ash, Alanna Baird, Nathan Cann, Ryan Livingstone, Ann Manuel and Bob Morouney of Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre.

Acrylic Pour Painting with Ann White
2022-06-04 13:00 - 16:00 UTC | River Art Centre, 8746 Main St., Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick
Cost: $40
Learn a new painting technique with instructor Ann White. Acrylic fluid art is a very satisfying form of abstract art. There are many techniques in this form of art with unlimited combinations of colours. On May 14 we will be completing a “Flip Cup Pour.”
Space is limited. Call the Gallery, 392-6769, or email info@mccainartgallery.com to register.
Class will be held at the River Art Centre, 8746 Main Street, Florenceville-Bristol
No refunds for cancellations less than 7 days prior to the workshop.
