When it comes to her drawings, Marjorie Spisak is a bit of a mixed bag.
While the Terrace artist was working on her latest exhibit for the Smithers Art Gallery (SAG) she realized her latest show didn’t exactly have a common theme.
But Spisak, who said she’s been an artist ever since she could wield a pencil, needed to come up with a title.
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So she went with it and put on “Mixed Messages”, currently being featured at the SAG until Nov. 9.
“[It] came about when I realized that I wasn’t going in any direction as in scenery or flowers or anything else that was there so it’s kind of a mixed bag.”
Spisak spent a lot of her formative and adult years in the Nass Valley, which she says has a large (but not total) influence on her art.
“I think that it is so appealing to me and it always has been [because] it’s a way of expressing. It’s very important to me to be making something.”
She has a strong interest in flowers and the natural world in general, with the show featuring a number of natural scenes.
“They’re mostly mixed media pictures with a lot of coloured pencil, ink and some acrylic,” said Spisak, noting that while many paint, she draws because she likes how the medium lends itself to detail.
The result is a number of highly technical, hyper-realistic scenes.
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“I couldn’t decide which area to go into with this one so I sort of mixed it up with flowers and animals and trees, rocks, et cetera.”
Another interesting feature of the show is the number of personal cards, all original works, for purchase alongside the larger prints.
As for the future? Spisak said she is currently planning a shift.
“I’m planning to work on more pictures towards the nature end of things, rather than the flowers, and I’m hoping to develop something from that.”
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