They surround us, affect us, we control them and turn to them for a refreshing escape.
Man’s relationship to the landscape is complicated, mitigated as it is by the dominance of the human species.
The artists within Headbones Gallery’s upcoming exhibition, Scapes: Landscapes, Seascapes, Innerscapes, Escapes, acknowledge man’s presence within the landscape.
“They approach landscape from different personal perspectives so that the interpretation of the scape is authentic and original,” said Headbones owner/artist Julie Oakes.
Participating in the exhibition are collaborating artists Rodney Konopaki of Vancouver and Rhonda Neufeld of Armstrong, as well as Kelowna’s Mary Smith McCulloch and South African born Paul Roux, who now lives in Southern Oregon after a sojourn in L.A.
Konopaki and Neufeld engage in a direct human involvement with landscape as they create their works together. Over the past nine years, they have been meeting in various locations across Canada to create art.
“Headbones is showing their Chatham Spin portfolios, two beautifully bound suites of linocuts each containing eight prints,” said Oakes.
McCulloch, who worked as the printmaking professor at Okanagan University College for many years, creates orchards and vineyards that have been transformed by the positive facets of her technical expertise.
“McCulloch’s monoprints exude warm glows of radiating rich tones of light and her colours break apart in places like light being dispersed by a prism so that the lively properties of colour and light become dominant,” said Oakes.
For Roux, the sea is his muse and despite his attempts to meliorate the powerful ocean with a couch or two, the vista has overcome his consciousness.
“The couches are all sitting precariously on sea or lake ice, facing the viewer or the water, inviting him/her to have a seat, so to speak, and to confront our contemporary reality,” said Roux. “The paintings also function as a metaphor for the prevailing conceptual separation between nature and civilization.”
Roux first came to Vernon as a resident artist with the Caetani Centre’s Fresh AiR program.
Headbones will show the video Project Apology, which Roux worked on while staying in the Okanagan.
Opening night for the exhibition is Saturday, June 4 from 6 to 8 p.m. Headbones Gallery is located at 6700 Old Kamloops Rd.
