Gibsons artist Cindy Riach has a way with water. Most of her oil paintings to be shown on Oct. 18 at the Westwind Gallery are of local, easily recognizable settings, many of them capturing reflections or a view from the water.
Riach (pronounced reach) likes boats, both painting them and paddling them; her perspective from a kayak, a boat that lies close to the water's surface, gives the viewer a feeling of immersion. In one painting, her perspective appears to be from under the water, a fish-eye view of a working boat. In another, her kayak has entered the heart of a log boom to capture a quintessential West Coast experience.
The water is a fairly new addition to her art, said Riach. She's lived in Gibsons for a year and a half now, a transplant from Dundas, Ont., an urban area around industrial Hamilton. While there, she painted back alleys and brick buildings, all found during her en plein air sessions. She also had a fondness for painting the humble objects of still life: a coffee pot, the Sunlight soap bottle, a straight-backed chair. Since moving to the Coast, the view has changed. She and her partner have kayaked around Barkley Sound and Jedediah Island; she's spent time on Gibsons wharf observing the resident tugs and fishing boats. It's a new world for the former kinesiologist.
Not long ago, she taught and researched biomechanics and motor control at McMaster University. The knowledge of anatomy and physiology should stand her in good stead when she returns to portrait and figure painting, as she hopes to do.
Art was a serious hobby for her at that time, but when she took early retirement in 2003, she dove in to her new career seriously, first going to an international school of painting in Umbria, Italy, then visiting the Ghost Ranch, made famous by Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico. She continued to learn through connections with other artists and instructors at the Dundas Valley School of Art.
When she moved to the West Coast, she was immediately attracted to local scenes. Her most interesting breakthrough is in allowing the water and its reflections, difficult to define with paint, to lead her towards the abstract. The abstract images are to be found within the work - the shadows playing on the ocean or the sea life that builds up on a dock.
"As a scientist, I start to paint with the left side of the brain, but the result is boring," she said. "I have to go to the intuitive. It's a combination of making sense of form and structure, yet being free to go with feelings."
She is currently on a cycle of change.
"Art is always a process, I think. Your level of sophistication is always ahead of your ability," she added.
The show's big paintings, 16 of them so far, are all oil, though Riach has skill with pastels. She participated in a show at the Arts Centre on Saltspring Island organized by the Canadian Pastel Artists of Canada and won an award for best landscape. But she likes oils for their "juiciness," especially apparent in how they render the vivid colours of local landmarks such as Molly's Reach and the Gumboot. Although her depiction of Molly's zooms in on only one section of the famous building, the viewer immediately recognizes the subject matter simply by its feel, its personality.
Another painting depicts a house at School Road and North Fletcher - it is an unremarkable house architecturally, but is made sublime in the light of a passing storm. "I don't paint Disneyland pretty pictures, but they are still cheerful," she said.
Riach will hold the show's opening reception on Saturday, Oct. 18, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Westwind Gallery, 292 Gower Point Rd. The show runs until Nov. 3.
