Tad Lake artist Grace Mills-Hodgins has pulled out a little bit of everything for her current show at Showcase Gallery in 100 Mile House.
It’s so diverse, she couldn’t even come up with a name, but the pieces reflect some of her newest and best work.
A couple of her favourites are pieces created using the encaustic method, which incorporates hot wax, coloured pigments, a lot of planning and a bit of luck. Pigmented beeswax is applied to the painting surface and manipulated with metal tools that can also be heated to make the wax flow.
People might recognize her largest piece, called I Just Don’t Know, as one she had featured earlier at the Cariboo Artists Guild Summer Show and Sale.
She says the painting got its name because while creating it, she wasn’t sure in which direction she should take it and she didn’t know if it would be finished on time for the show.
After this show, it and the other encaustic pieces will be heading off for exposure in the Okanagan at Nadine’s Fine Art – a gallery in Vernon.
Mills-Hodgins adds she loves getting her “artwork out there.”
“It gives you a real boost when you get recognition for your work.”
Most of her paintings at Showcase are snapshots of the Cariboo landscape and nostalgic scenes done in oil and acrylics. Some were created using a palette knife and a thicker use of oils. It’s a technique she worked on last winter during a course she took at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. During the six-week session, she learned different techniques that allowed her to paint successfully using just about anything other than a brush.
“It was a good thing to do, and very stimulating because it gets you out of doing the same thing in the same way. It makes me very happy, but working in new ways, you don’t really know what’s going to come of it.”
Mills-Hodgins says she will be heading back to school again this winter for more inspiration.
Her show runs until Dec. 4 and gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and on Saturday from noon to 4 p.m.
