Artist Jennifer Drys-dale’s current show at the Doris Crowston Gallery at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt is a tribute to her parents and their ability with commercial illustration.
Into the Wilderness is a traditional guy show. The woodsman (a portrait of her father) is at ease in the forest wearing hunter green and carrying a gun. The angler is poised to cast his fishing rod. A plaid-shirted man, seen from the back, is stalking into a thicket of undergrowth.
“My parents were commercial artists back in the day, and always encouraged us to be creative,” Drysdale said. “There were always lots of fun things to try out … painting, drawing, batik, collage, sculpture, mono printing.”
Her dad let her use his graphic art supplies and sometimes he would take Jennifer and her sister into his downtown studio in Montreal to hang out and see how he worked with other people in the industry. Her mother did fashion drawings for various designers in Montreal.
The symbol that draws all these works together is the plaid shirt. In Crypsis 1 the torso of a figure is depicted in a plaid shirt, and the image is cut off below the eyes. In Illumine, Drysdale captures a sense of movement in the red, plaid-shirted fellow among the ferns. In Zephyr, the man wears a blue plaid shirt, face turned into the slight breeze.
Before Drysdale moved to the Sunshine Coast in 2012, she had been living in downtown Toronto for many years. B.C. was a huge change. The landscape that has a big impact on newcomers made her feel that she was reconnecting with nature, and she wanted to illustrate that feeling.
“So the idea of the plaid became a metaphor for Canadian identity,” she said, “and was the beginning of the ideas for this new work.”
Powell River artist Rochelle Nehring complements Drysdale’s work well.
Titled The Good Old Boys, Nehring depicts a tobacco farmer, a trombonist, a pool player — all men of another country, Cuba or Mexico, and all comfortable in their masculine skin. In one painting, The Sand Between Her Toes, a man helps his aging mother into the water so she can feel the sea, a daily act that Nehring witnessed in Mexico. In another, The Satisfied Woman, the subject lies languidly smoking a cigarette with a garment loosely draped about her while a man with a Harley tattoo plays guitar in the foreground.
Both artists display masterful story telling with paint. The exhibition runs until Oct. 26. The gallery is part of the Arts Centre located at the corner of Trail and Medusa in Sechelt. For further information see the website at www.scartscouncil.com or phone 604-885-5412.
