Artist Donna Balma of Roberts Creek is difficult to categorize. She has been called a visionary, not of this world, imaginative, and her art is variously dubbed as fantasy, outsider art, psychic pop or surreal. Balma has been painting and drawing for over 30 years and she changes her styles frequently.
“I love challenges,” she told Coast Reporter. “I’ll work one time with just five colours for a challenge, or if I’m reading about theosophists, I’ll paint that.” How do you paint theosophists, you might ask? This theme turned up in her art as a series of young men warming eggs.
A retrospective of Balma’s work opens at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery (GPAG) on Thursday, Jan. 14 and runs to Feb. 7 with an opening reception on Sat., Jan. 16 from 2 to 4 p.m. Balma’s friend, artist Alanna Wood, will curate over 90 pieces and that’s only 10 per cent of the collected work. The various series throughout the years include the girl and dog series, the one pubic hair series (bathtub scenes inspired by her former husband), the la la la baby baby baby series, and so on.
Her strength is in drawing. Renowned Coast artist R. B. Wainwright, RCA, writes: “Donna has an arresting vocabulary of images. In her paintings the images take on a visceral structure, are bold and vigorous, full of energy and excess – with a hint of being erotic. Her prints and drawings, on the other hand, are creations of detail and minutiae.”
One of the more detailed series of works is the world of Lentis, an alternate dimension of crazily leaning buildings and tiny, wide-eyed humans. It’s also one of her favourite series – the idea came to her in a rush and she drew eagerly while in an artist’s exalted state.
“Sometimes I look at pieces in my collection,” she says, “and I can’t believe I painted that. ‘Where did that come from?’”
Balma, 81, began painting late in life, and she has won awards for her work. She lives simply, as she has done for the past 30 years, in a cabin and studio constructed from trees logged from her home site.
“I don’t think artists ever retire,” she says. Her colourful abstracts were shown for one year at a gallery in Baltimore, others have shown in Brooklyn and more recently on the Coast at Goldmoss Gallery. The Lentis series toured England, Scotland and New York and earned her a membership in the Society for Art of the Imagination.
Balma will present her book, Codex Umbilicus, and give a talk on Saturday, Jan. 23 at 2 p.m. Designed by Sean Murphy of Sechelt, the hardcover book has no text; it’s entirely tiny drawings of creatures and imagined pictographic language.
“It’s strange and beautiful,” Balma says, “and it comes from the place where Lentis comes from.” She will also have copies of Reconciliation, her 2007 book that tells more about her life.
Also at GPAG in the Eve Smart Gallery, Natasha Vukovic will be exhibiting collages, Dying Slowly in Your Memory, an installation based on the subject of memory and how memory changes over time. Vukovic will be at the Gallery for an artist talk on Sunday, Jan. 17 at 2 p.m.
