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colborne art gallerynewsletter fall/winter `10 from the editor even if our days have been unusually warm this autumn long nights invite us to light fires and share cozy times with loved ones when you do wander our way from hearth and home you will find our face is changing we are now most of the way towards becoming fully wheel chair accessible with a new ramp in place and the widening of our doors complete the township did a wonderfully sensitive job of incorporating the ramp into our historical building and irene osborne led the team to renovate our garden beds in order to accommodate the change two beautiful clematis plants with trellises were donated to the gallery by caudette and bill cowan honouring our beloved former member alison seale we thank all who were involved in this work as well claus heinecke is close to installing his large sculpture entitled empathy at the front of our building he has been busy working on the piece this past summer and we anxiously await its arrival stop in at the gallery soon to see these with all of our other latest creations why empathy please mark nov 20 on your calendars this is the opening day of our annual winter show at the gallery called all things bright and beautiful we will have a limited number of tiny canvasses by members of the gallery for sale on opening day these will be perfect gifts or ornaments or an artistic embellishment for on top of a gift all proceeds from the small canvasses will go to the gallery there will also be an array of artwork for sale small to large as well as ornaments and individual one-of-akind cards the show runs until sunday december 19 please join us in celebrating the festive season ahead winter show and sale the sculpture due to be erected before the colborne art gallery is entitled empathy two interlocking cylinders echoing each other in size and shape seems an apt metaphor for the idea of empathy on the one hand i prefer to let people to find their own meaning in the aesthetics of a piece while on the other hand i feel good about suggesting my vision in this case as an entry point empathy that most human of characteristics is quality to be fostered by society for the sake of peace and harmony it is about walking in another s shoes it is the root behind do onto others as you would have them do onto you an important sentiment in any age but especially importance in a time when the survival of humanity is not at all assured this may sound pretentious but i believe it to be no less significant and if this sculpture calls into awareness the need for empathy it will be a significant symbol as well as a bold image claus heinecke birth announcement when i asked our jeweler monika becker to tell us about the birth of her new son and how it is affecting her life as an artist she revealed that she typed it with one hand while holding finn with the other just one of my new mothering skills

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on august 24 i gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named finn my husband terence devine and i are thrilled with becoming new parents so far looking after our little boy has kept us busy full-time but i m eager to discover the new creative channels that motherhood will open up for me and my family on a spiritual level finn has already elevated my consciousness to greater heights than i thought possible i look forward to introducing him to the world of creative expression especially that found at the colborne gallery and discovering the many ways that the love for my family will find expression through my own art i have a little fascination about how certain people are called artists at some point in life we identify ourselves this way and at others the identification can become eclipsed but i think the essence remains and nothing can really take the artist out of us i put the question out there for the whole group one that my 24 year old son recently asked me when did you first know you were an artist the response was delightful as you will see when did you first really know you were an artist i am fascinated by the physical and technical processes of painting i love the challenge of taking an idea an impression or ordinary image and transforming it into a visual language that describes my interpretation of the subject depicted evoking for the viewer an emotional impression of what the painting means to them i am very pleased to announce the addition of our newest member lesley harries-jones who hails all the way from peterborough she writes of her beautiful work lesley harries-jones currently my medium of choice is encaustic painting i create paintings that reflect my way of seeing nature the sculptural and transparent qualities of encaustic capture perfectly my impression of landscape depicted in my paintings are dramatic landscapes defined and described by light and the effect light has on transforming what we see around us the abstract images describe the vibrant colours and texture often overlooked as we interact with our environment what emerges from my compositions are the elements of nature that regardless of the time of day night or season reveal the remarkable splendour of nature at work i don t recall consciously deciding that i was an artist as a young girl i loved to make things sewing knitting baking sandbox cities my preferred activity was doing something creative and this has continued through out my life although i was never encouraged to pursue it professionally when i was 35 i decided to give myself permission to go to art school i loved the experience and have since done whatever i needed to do to maintain a creative life terrie macdonald my mother discovered my artistic talent when i being about three years old drew pictures on the freshly painted kitchen wall strangely enough she did not preserve this early artistic expression of mine but she screamed at me and even spanked me and called a man to repaint the kitchen it did not destroy my need to express myself i only become wiser in the choice of materials on which i was drawing jirina marton i think it would be sometime in the early eighties when after several years of instruction with peter kolisnyk and he was giving one of his class critiques he said well we all know wilson can

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draw i was so proud and thought maybe i can become an artist anne wilson for as long as i can remember i was drawing and creating things i thought that real artists were those who had their works in books or public galleries and worth great amounts of money when someone bought my first painting and others called me an artist it felt premature and a misplaced title now i ve come to believe that anyone is an artists when being creative irene osborne as a four year old sitting in my luxurious space created out of a large box i was going to create homes then at five armed with needle thread fabric and a barbie in dire need of a wardrobe i was going to be a fashion designer years later still using needle and thread still somewhat obsessed with boxes and houses and dolls all have been combined childhood dreams do become reality veronica derry i too always knew i was to be an artist and had huge encouragement from my artist father growing up i drew and painted everything around our garden tools bikes pets wheelbarrows chicken coops etc upon my father s untimely death i rebelled against art school and went into nursing finally at my early retirement i went straight back to being an artist as if i d never stopped judith kreps hawkins irresistible and although never invited to use her materials i was always fascinated by them heather roy i m not sure this answers when i knew i was an artist but i refer to it as the origin of my path in art the memory that comes to mind for me is from about age 5 i made myself a camera out of a shoe box then proceeded to take pictures of my family with it i had stashed crayon drawings inside of each family member that i then produced as the developed photos my brother who is 3 years older than me was sure that i had help with the drawings they were too good for a 5 year old i think that s when i knew i had a talent that was different than others in my little world though it took me many more years to be able to call myself an artist barbara buntin my mother always packed a fun bag when we went away camping i loved to draw in my scrapbook and create in grade seven my mother gave me lino tools and i was so excited to get started just never stopped avril bull-jones when i was twelve i wanted to supplement my allowance so i decided to make christmas corsages and sell them door-to-door i ordered my material from regal stationery and made about four dozen corsages each one different from the other i sold them all i loved making them and i knew from that time on i would always be involved in some creative process mary lou burnside i can t say exactly when i knew i was an artist but probably at about age eight i decided it was preferable to becoming someone famous and glamorous it was much more fun for me to make glamorous things my father loves working in metal and has dabbled in jewelry making my mother taught me needlecrafts as a child and is now an accomplished quilter so the two of them can take the credit for sparking my desire to create jewelry art monika becker as a preschooler i amused myself by filling untold numbers of scribblers with drawings many of which where copies of things my dad drew for me by the time i got to kindergarten i drew better than most of other the kids my drawings drew praise from the teacher and were a source of pride to me this skill advantage i enjoyed has fed my interest in art ever since claus heinecke i loved the names of the crayons like sea foam green and did my first painting of a viking ship on a piece of brown paper towel when i was about eight at my grandmother s the sight and smell of her oil painting table was

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i ve always known i was an artist but it wasn t until the age of eight that i found out not everyone thought i was a child prodigy i entered a drawing contest at my elementary school my first contest ever and i didn t win first prize ­ what a rude awakening that was for me i didn t stop being an artist but i m still nervous when i enter juried shows pat stanley colborne art gallery show schedule 2010-2011 nov 20 dec 19 2010 all things bright and beautiful jan 29 mar 6 eileen menzel mar12 april 17 group show aprl 23 may 29 pat stanley june 4 july 10 wood fired potters july 16 aug 21 heather roy aug 27 oct 2 irene osborne nov 19 dec 23 bright and beautiful 2011 oct 8 nov 13 veronica derry

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