Two new exhibits at Gibsons Public Art Gallery (GPAG) celebrate the work of four Sunshine Coast artists’ photography and painting, with several examples of the two media merged to create something new.
Painter Linda L. Nardelli and photographer Vern Minard have collaborated for their exhibit Inn Saei, an Icelandic term referring to the world of feelings, imagination, and intuition. Each artist has brought works that they alone have produced – Nardelli’s ethereal, abstract mixed media, and Minard’s striking, large-scale nature photos of scenes familiar to any of us who’ve walked through local seaside forests.
In some pieces, photography meets painting, literally. Nardelli has taken Minard’s photographic images and added mixed-media layers. In some, Nardelli’s enhancements predominate; in others, like Nursing Trees, her work is subtle and draws us in to try to discern what’s photo and what’s paint. In all cases, it’s an interesting synthesis.
“Through their shared vision, they seek to give voice to the power and beauty of unity and wholeness,” they said in a combined artists’ statement. Mission accomplished.
The other GPAG exhibit, Mother Daughter Coast, is highlighted by the photography of the late Shelley Twohig (1959 –2018). It’s a retrospective curated by her daughter, artist Jessica Gabriel, who is also displaying a few of her own paintings in the show, along with two short videos.
Twohig evidently loved to experiment, but with pre-digital technologies. “Shelley never used photoshop and did not alter her photos in any way digitally,” a GPAG news release noted. “These are all the raw, original images.”
One series is a set of 12 photos of a cello, each blended in a slide projector with photos of flowers or trees.
Other pieces in the exhibit show Twohig’s fondness for the abundant photographic opportunities offered by our coastline, featuring undulating rocks and water. The sea and the forest also figure in Gabriel’s two acrylic paintings, arbutus peels, and sea threw (titles the artist has chosen not to capitalize).
Inn Saei and Mother Daughter Coast are on at GPAG, Thursday through Monday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., until Sunday Nov. 29.
