Past Shows

2023

BEYOND THE TRADITIONAL

David McClyment
Alyssa King
Carol Forbes

May 20 - June 17, 2023

David McClyment

David McClyment

David McClyment has been showing professionally for almost 40 years, in the GTA, throughout Ontario and across Europe. His work has been the focus of many grants from all levels of government, including the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.

His exhibitions have been regularly reviewed in many major media outlets, including The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Daily Star, and the Winnipeg Free Press. Until recently, McClyment had been represented by the David Kaye Gallery in Toronto’s West Queen West district until the gallery closed in 2018. Currently, McClyment is out there doing his own thing.

He is also a professor and past co-ordinator of the Fine Arts Studio Program at Centennial College in Toronto, where he has won several awards for teaching excellence.

 

 

Alyssa King
Carol Forbes

LANDSCAPES FROM A WOMAN'S PERSPECTIVE

Susan Hay
Wendy Wood
Ashley Toner

June 21 - July 13, 2023

Susan Hay

Susan is an acrylic landscape painter who has lived in Haliburton County for the past decade. Her career as an artist coincided with the purchase of a cottage in the area partly so that she could study at the Haliburton School of Art and Design.

Susan’s landscapes are painted on uniquely texturized canvases with colours that sing with vitality. Most of her recent work has been inspired by photos of natural shorelines that she has taken from the bow of her canoe. Susan’s love of the natural world is clear in her work.

Susan has been a regular exhibitor in the Haliburton Arts Community and took part in the Tour de Forest Summer Studio Tour each Civic Holiday weekend for 9 years. 

 

 

Wendy Wood
Ashley Toner

2 Part Harmony

Blady & Van Mil

July 14 - August 10, 2023

Video: Rising from the Canvas

Video: Kaleidoscape

Annette Blady

Annette Blady was born in Toronto, Canada. She graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1980. In the following decade, partnering with Van Mil in an architectural model making company, she rose to international prominence as an interior designer. Her work included model suites for major condominium projects such as The Nieman Marcus Centre in Chicago, Harbourfront in Toronto, and The World Financial Centre in Battery Park, New York City. Blady moved on from design work in 1989 to pursue a full-time career in fine art.

Exhibiting internationally, Blady’s canvases can now be found in many prominent galleries and private collections in Canada, the United States and Europe. Her eclectic style uses textured exotic papers and fabrics, cut glass, and metallic acrylic, as mixed media collage painting. She links motifs from ancient symbolism with those of modern design and abstract expressionism.

Blady’s 3D encaustic works, incorporating paper and fabric, are unique and have sold internationally. These works informed the moulage technique co-invented for Rising from the Canvas, with Van Mil.

 

Al Van Mil

Alphons Van Mil was born on the Isle of Texel, in the Netherlands, to a scholarly and artistic family. For most of the last 50 years, Al Van Mil has created visual artworks using a large variety of mediums, including acrylic or oil paint on large canvases. His works range from landscapes and portraits as abstracted expressions, to eclectic hybrids as conceptually appealing ideas.

Van Mil was at first inspired by the conceptual Canadian artists couple of Joyce Wieland and Michael Snow. He consequently received mentoring from Conceptual Artist Eric Cameron while studying Fine Art at the University of Guelph. Creating art full time since he graduated, Van Mil’s work has been exhibited in private and public galleries, including the Musee Des BeauxArts in Montreal, The National Gallery of Canada, and the Art Gallery of Ontario. His earlier paintings were also inspired by the mixed visual-metaphors of the Pop artists like James Rosenquist, which drove him to develop a broad vocabulary of original styles to juxtapose. Van Mil’s eclectic conceptual approach was further influenced by the poetry of E. E. Cummings, and by the modal improvisations of BeBop Jazz artist Miles Davis. An experiential take on the architecture of Frank Gehry also influenced his later work.

Van Mil honed his techniques by painting onstage as a Performance Artist with the multi-genre improvisational arts group called Collaborations. He shared the stage with many prominent Canadian musicians, dancers and opera stars, and also co-designed sets for many performances.

Van Mil was commissioned to paint the portraits of the two MVP winners by the Toronto Blue Jays for the two years when they won their two consecutive baseball playoff titles. He also illustrated the CLA Book of the Year Award winning title, ‘The Tiny Kite of Eddy Wing’, a children’s book written by Maxine Trottier.

Commercial as well as fine art projects broadened Van Mil’s interests over the years, producing works for international clientele chiefly from Chicago to Toronto, to New York, and down the eastern seaboard to Atlanta. Partnering with Blady and others, Van Mil founded and ran an architectural technology and model-making company for 6 years called Architectural Dimensions, named one of the top three in the world by New York magazine. Blady +Van Mil’s expertise gained in 3D modelling further informed the moulage technique they co-invented for the Rising from the Canvas collaborative series.

Into the Woods

Byron Hodgins

August 11 - August 31, 2023

Byron Hodgins received a B.F.A from Nova Scotia School of Art and Design. He lives and works in Ottawa and has exhibited across Canada.

Hodgins uses landscape like a mirror. Through colour, abstract symbolism, and grand romantic gestures the visible exterior manifest the invisible interior until the two are irrevocably intermingled. Here an innate understanding of the metaphysical expresses itself through nature, where each curve of light becomes a stroke in an almost holy alphabet. The results are trance-like meditations on the illusion of duality, a challenge to the viewer to see their oneness with the world so seemingly around them.

Ponds and Other Things

Barbara Hart

August 11 - August 31, 2023

Barbara Hart has been painting since 1985. Her paintings, in watercolour, acrylic and oil, are infused with light and energy and reflect scenes of nature and touching depictions of people. A graduate of the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, Barbara has had a career of instrumental music teaching in the Toronto school system but has always found time to study and practice art. Retired, she now spends her time painting and performing.

Mission Statement

My mission is to entice the viewer into an intimate, personal world for a brief moment, to be united with the soul of others. It is in the soul that art resides and the caretakers of the soul are the artists and the spinners of tales. I strive in my paintings to create stories with colour and emotional depth, scenes which cause an emotional reaction in me. These I strive to render onto canvas; they hold feelings that I wish to share.

Inspiration

My landscapes and portraits and not intended to be copies of the subject; rather, to be a reaction to and an interpretation of the subject. The real message of the work is hidden, and to be found inside. Much of my inspiration has come from my fondness for HAIKU poetry, the ancient Japanese art verse form. “The Old Pond by Basho, “My Abandoned House” by Isso, and “The Sound of Heron Wings”; these evocative poems, amongst others, are reflected in my canvases, leaving the viewer the gift of tranquility, contemplation and a profound sense of peace.

Art Blast

Vanya Ryan and Rob Croxford

September 1 - September 27, 2023

Vanya Ryan

 

 

Vanya Ryan completed Art School in her twenties, then worked as a Graphic Designer for a few years, then decided to pursue her passion of fine art.

She enrolled in fine art workshops as well as mixed media and acrylic painting, and then proceeded to learn, grow and explore her love of painting as she pursued her professional art career.

Vanya enjoys working as a full time artist, near her home town of Guelph Ontario. Her discipline is focused on Acrylic and Mixed Media on Stretched Canvas.

Though she loves to create whatever her inspirational mood demands of her, Vanya is presently focused on the details, of light, shadows and colours of her favorite florals. With her garden flowers as the inspiration, she loves to create larger than life canvases, choosing one or two flowers as the focus of the painting.

Vanya also continues to create paintings derived from her imagination, delving into thoughts, ideas, images and dreams then creating, often on a textured canvas. Well known as her “Introspective” series. Vanya is inspired to create these, thoughtful works with a sense of peace and harmony.

As an artist, who sells her work locally and internationally, Vanya looks forward to continuing her love of painting, for many years to come.

Rob Croxford

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