Artist Fraser Brinsmead brings the immensity of the whole down to the intimate of the individual with his new show Big Cities, Private Moments at the West End Gallery.
Brinsmead’s show opens July 4 and runs until July 16.
Capturing iconic cities such as New York and San Francisco, Fraser has also set his artistic eye to the more familiar cities of Vancouver and Victoria with a goal of capturing the humanity within the space.
Brinsmead took inspiration from a Sara Teasdale poem, Lights of New York, that invokes the human pulse of a city that is “a fire that neither wind nor rain can dim.”
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Urban landscape offers an endless source of inspiration to capture Fraser’s attention.
“It speaks to me about our personal connections to the city,” Brinsmead says.
“Our favourite street view, the walk we took to school or the corner coffee shop. In this most recent series of paintings I wanted to find and express some those intimate and private moments that connect us to our urban world and make all the chaos seem worth it.”
In some pieces Brinsmead’s buildings loom large over the people around them while in others, there is a sense of balance and peaceful co-existence.
A few doors down along View Street from West End Gallery is Madrona Gallery which is hosting a Guthrie Gloag solo exhibition Adapt, July 4 to 18. It features keen use of driftwood in local wildlife such as wolves, crows and owls.
In Oak Bay, the Avenue Gallery is showing Brent Lynch until July 5. Lynch is recognized as a landscape painter, using mood, light, composition and movement to convey his experiences. His brushstrokes evoke the colourful afternoons in Nanoose Bay and other nooks of Southern Vancouver Island.
The Avenue will then host Maria Josenhans’ newest oil paintings, July 6 to 13, which depict Southern Island coastal scenes. Josenhans connects beauty with a lightness of touch to create an ethereal world .
“I paint to explore and share what I hold dear and hope that when others look at my paintings they too may recall their own unguarded moments with nature,” Josenhans said.
Gage Gallery on Oak Bay Avenue is showing Out of the Silence, a two-part show from June 30 to July 11, and then July 14 to 25. Gage is also showing more than 300 pieces of its Challenge Crisis with Creativity, an online virtual show made up of submissions by 120 artists as a response to the COVID-19 shut down.
