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 Old derelict buildings, outdated machinery and changing modes of transportation – they are all relics of the past now splendidly littering our landscape as glowing reminders of their previous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