Art Gallery of Northumberland Past Exhibitions

Past Exhibitions - 2004

At the AGN, Victoria Hall, Cobourg

At the AGN, Upstairs Gallery, Port Hope

At the AGN, Victorial Hall, Cobourg

Art contained: The art of the Book, the Box and the Pen in Contemporary Calligraphy

Saturday November 20, 2004 - January 8, 2005
Opening Reception November 20, 2004 2 – 4 p.m.

When most of us think of calligraphy we think of illuminated manuscripts or dusty diplomas. The practice of contemporary calligraphy has moved past these traditions to explore the world of words, letters and fonts. We are pleased to be hosting an exhibition of exciting examples of this traditional art, framed in contemporary experience. Many of the works are playful in nature, while others explore surface materials other than traditional vellum or parchment.

The artists participating in this exhibition are Adrienne Arvidson, Nona Brown, Wendy Cain, Margaret Challenger, Fiona Crangle, Barbara Horscroft, Kathy Aubrey, Lynn Lefler, Susan van Tijn, Louis Wint and Lily Yee.

Robert Motherwell: Octavio Paz Suite

September 11 - November 6, 2004

This suite of twenty-seven lithographs by the late American artist, Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) and three poems by the Mexican Poet Octavio Paz (Born 1914), is a significant part of the AGN’s permanent collection.

The images were created by one of the last century’s most important and influential artists, Robert Motherwell. Known as an abstract painter of such arresting images as his “Elegy to the Spanish Civil War”, he was also a printmaker of international repute. He has been called one of the most brilliant and perhaps the most articulate of the artists in the so-called New York School of abstract expressionism.

Octavio Paz has an international reputation for his poetry and prose, and other literary contributions. It was natural for these two formidable contributors to the arts should collaborate on a project. Both were long admirers of each other’s work.

The three poems by Octavio Paz included in this collaboration with Motherwell include “Nocturno de San Ildefonso” (“San Ildefonso Nocturne”); “Vuelta” (“Return”) and “Piel Sondo del Mundo” (“Skin Sound of the World”). Each poem is presented in its entirety in both Spanish and English. Each visual image is accompanied by a few lines from one of the poems in both languages.

Sphere of Influence: Airola, Kolisynk & Paget
50th Anniversary of the Cobourg Art Club

July 10, 2004 – September 6, 2004

Opening Reception: July 10, 2 pm

What began as a community group interested in formal art instruction has had a long and exciting life of its own. The focus of this anniversary exhibition is on the three artist teachers that have instructed the members of the club. Each an accomplished artist in their right, their vastly different styles have provided exceptional inspiration to their students over the years.

The works included in this exhibition are from the AGN’s permanent collection and private collections in the community. We are grateful to those people who have made these works available to lend to us.

10th Annual Student Exhibition
June 5th - June 26th, 2004
Opening Reception: Saturday June 5th at 2 pm

We are proud and delighted to mark the 10th year of the Regional Secondary School art students participating in this exhibition of emerging artists. Every year brings a new group of talented young people to the public's attention. This year we are pleased that all of the schools that participated in the original exhibition are participating this year.

The schools select works that represent each grade level's years projects. The variety of talent is evident early in the student's art studies. Many have gone on to study fine art, design, theatre arts and art history.

The TD Canada Trust has agreed to sponsor this exhibition and as part of the celebration art reference books will be presented to each of the school libraries.

Michael Everett Glover: The Other Side of the Tracks: Paintings of Canada

Saturday April 17 - Saturday May 29, 2004
Opening Reception April 17, 2004 2 - 4 p.m.
Artist Talk: Saturday May 15, 2004 2:00 p.m.

Please join us at the opening reception, where Michael will be present. To add to the occasion, Michael's friend and musician David Newlands will be present to entertain. The cover of David's new CD is one of Michael's paintings. Michael will also be giving an artist talk on Saturday May 15 at 2:00p.m.

We are pleased to welcome the Station Bistro as a sponsor of this exhibition. A dinner for two at the Bistro will be the prize in a draw to be held at the gallery. Remember to fill out an entry form when you visit this exhibition.

The Art Gallery of Northumberland's
23rd Annual Juried Exhibition ( Mar 11, 2004 - April 15, 2004)

THEME: Time

Time seems to have particular resonance now that we have entered the 21st Century. This year's theme, however, is not intended to limit artistic creativity to the millennium. Rather, the millennium is a mere launching pad for the mind and hand to interpret "time"-whether reflective or foreseeing, momentous or minute, linear or looping, specific or transcendental-in any shape or colour.

Themes are always at the heart of art exhibitions. They unify works of various media and present a point of entry for the viewer. While each work should crackle with individuality, an overall theme provides the context within which to enjoy and appreciate that individuality.

JURORS: Michael Bell and Wendy Cain

Michael Bell is the current and inaugural director of the Carleton University Art Gallery, which houses a large collection of national and international, historical and contemporary works and which supports the local arts community in Ottawa. Previously, he has served as Director of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (1981-1986), Assistant Director (Public Programmes) at the National Gallery of Canada (1979-81), and Director of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, in Kingston (1973-1978). In 1974, his book Painters in a New Land was awarded the Governor General's award for non-fiction.

Wendy Cain is an artist who works primarily with print and papermaking techniques. She has exhibited extensively in Canada and abroad. Recently, her work was represented in The National Paper Exhibition, which traveled to the Art Gallery of Northumberland in August 1999. Wendy is also a Faculty member in the Printmaking Programme at the Ontario College of Art and Design, in Toronto-a position she has held since 1978.

Selections from the AGN's Historical Collections
February 7, 2004 - March 14, 2004

February is heritage month in Ontario. The AGN is fortunate to have a strong historical component in its permanent collection. We will be celebrating this collection of landscape and portrait paintings during heritage month. Works by Paul Kane, F.M. Bell-Smith, Caroline and Frank Armington, Gerald Hayward, Otto Jacobi, Augustus John, T. Mower Martin, A.Y. Jackson, Robert Harris, Lucius O'Brien and Frederick Verner, among others will be featured. The AGN was given much of the collection by the late Charlotte Horner M.D. We are grateful for this legacy.

Richard McNeill: Transitions
December 13, 2003 to January 31, 2004
Main Gallery
Artist Talk: Saturday, January 17, 2004 at 2 pm

The AGN is pleased to be presenting the works of sculptor Richard McNeill. Richard's work, in his own words "are abstractions of thought, feeling and nature. They are efforts to bridge the material and spiritual, encompassing mystery, power and magic - they allude to the known, the unknown and beyond." This exhibition concentrates primarily on his lunar lodge series and his animythic works. All are challenging to the viewer. The strength of McNeill's vision and technique are apparent throughout.

Richard McNeill makes his home in Brighton and Toronto, where he is the senior sculpture instructor at Central Technical School. He is the Past President of the Canadian Sculptor's Society and former Director of the Canadian Sculpture Centre.

Peter Haller: Linescapes
October 25, 2003 - December 6, 2003
Main Gallery
Opening Reception 2 p.m. - 4 p.m. Saturday October 25, 2003

It is always exciting when an artist draws new inspiration. That experience came to artist Peter Haller during his 2000 residency in Berlin. The vibrant and edgy art scene in Berlin gave him license to explore new media. Working in a studio complex with other artists, Haller found himself studying the paper casting that others had discarded. The resulting work in this exhibition is an exploration of line and space, executed in paper, on paper. Haller's interest in the space between the lines has develeoped in scale and composition

The Gallery is producing a catalogue for this exhibition and we are grateful to Peter Haller, David Hunter, Melanie Browne and Charlotte Cockerill for their work on this publication.

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At the AGN, Upstairs Gallery, Port Hope

Lenni Workman, Now & Then

January 8 – March 6, 2005
Opening Reception: Saturday January 8 th, 4 – 6 p.m.

Lenni Workman is a painter from the beautiful country near Warkworth, where she works out of her farm, “Art Farm”, surrounded by the plants and forms you see in her paintings. During the growing season her green fingers produce the certified organic produce she supplies to Ste. Anne’s Country Inn at Grafton and her stall at the Cobourg Farmers’ Market, but when winter closes in Lenni paints. Recipient of many government awards and grants, she has exhibited at the Roberts Gallery in Toronto, St. Laurent and Hill Gallery in Ottawa, and across Canada, and for 4 years she has been on the board of the Northumberland Hills Artists’ Association.

In her words: “This is my first exhibition in Port Hope and I am very pleased to present a selection of work: recent, and from the past eight years. With this body of work, whatever the subject or medium, the viewer may be aware of an on-going interest in light and shadow”.

“In my current ‘Harvest’ series, I am using light with a chiaroscuro effect to bring energy and theatricality to an otherwise quiet subject. These subjects I know well, having grown most of them in my garden. The ‘Harvest’ paintings refer to the historical European still-life tradition”.

Liz Parkinson: A Morphology – Form & Structure

July 15, 2004 – September 19, 2004
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 17, 4 pm – 6 pm

This exhibition, consisting of two large editioned drypoint prints and related monoprints, considers the natural world from historic, scientific, and artistic viewpoints.

Liz Parkinson lives in Port Hope in what was in 1850 the Englishtown Fire Hall. She mostly works here too, although the large drypoints in this exhibition were produced at Toronto ’s Open Studio Printmaking Studio where Liz has printed since 1979. She was Artist in Residence at Gros Morne National Park in 2002 and is participating in an exhibition there this summer. She is also showing her work at Loop Gallery in Toronto in June and July.

Her work is found in most major Canadian Bank collections and Canadian Embassies throughout the world. She is the recipient of Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council Grants and won First Prize in the 1996 Great Canadian Printmaking Competition. This prize money, coupled with a Canada Council Travel Grant, allowed her to spend a month studying at the Botany Library of the British Museum , an experience that continues to inspire and influence her work.

In the accompanying Group Show we are very happy to exhibit once again the work of Tom Bjarnason, Margaret Challenger, Joan Hayes and Helen Parkes, and to show for the first time at the Upstairs paintings by Lorraine Staples and Lenni Workman. A few of the delightful, highly imaginative creations of Fiona Crangle will also be on view. The photographic work is still under selection.

Joellen Brydon: The Artist as Storyteller

April 1 - July 4
Reception Saturday, April 3, 2004 4 - 6 p.m.

From the intense burning colours of Janet Read's "Winter Fire" abstracts to the whimsical magic of JoEllen Brydon's art is quite a leap! But once again we're having a complete change for our Spring Show, of a kind we've never featured before!

'Folk art' is what many of us might call Brydon's painting, with its other-worldly quaint scenes and lack of perspective. But Brydon, from a village south of Peterborough, calls herself a Storyteller, a passer-along of wry day-to-day incidents and preserver of humorous anecdotes, which are often written onto the painting. Her work is Irish-rooted, like her forebears, yet entirely Ontarian; in fact you'll recognize, through the seasons, the familiar Northumberland Hills whose narrow roads snake past accurately portrayed tiny barns, furrowed fields and minute villages. In one, on a perfect kidney-shaped frozen pond, tiny hockey players battle for supremacy. Brydon also paints rural Ontario interiors and their residents, often with a wonderfully droll tale about their idiosyncrasies to make you smile or think.

Brydon has exhibited extensively in the major Canadian cities and her work hangs in the Museum of Civilisation, the Art Bank of Canada and the Danish Consulate.

Winter Fire: New Work by Janet Read
Through March 21, 2004

Janet Read is very much a rising star of Canadian painting and her work has a most enviable following, particularly in Toronto and Quebec. This exhibit comes to us hot on the heels of shows in Peterborough and Toronto.

In the twenty of so lyrical abstracts which have been assembled at the Upstairs Gallery, Read's love of pure colour is very apparent, the canvases radiating breathtakingly intense and glorious hues.

Annie McDonald: Openings: Sculpture in Stone
October 25, 2003 - December 6, 2003
Paul Kane Gallery
Opening Reception 2 p.m. - 4 p.m. Saturday October 25, 2003

As a companion exhibition to Peter Haller's exhibition of linescapes we are pleased to present recent work by Brighton area artist Annie McDonald. Working in soapstone, McDonald explores the theme of wounds, compassion and possibilities that can occur in times of crisis. The work is very personal and therefore very vulnerable. The juxtaposition of that vulnerability to the hardness on the stone's surface is handled with confidence. The contemplation of the psychological, rendered in stone sculpture, influences much of the artist's work.

This exhibition in our Paul Kane Gallery gives the viewer an intimate space to contemplate this emerging artist's work.

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