Celebrating the country lifestyle with depictions of wildlife and the traditional blue-collar family, Alexandra Verboom’s feature in the Showcase Gallery is on display until Nov. 1.
Verboom will have her work featured for five weeks in the gallery this fall, where visitors can peruse and purchase her work, too.
“My theme that I’ve been kind of working in for the last while is capturing the moments of everyday life,” she said. “So that includes local wildlife and the everyday country life, so painting the family, traditional stuff like someone hanging clothing on a laundry line to someone trimming hooves.”
This is the first time Verboom has been featured in the Showcase: “It’s nice to start showing my work and get it out there. It’s been good.”
Previously, Verboom had pursued personal art projects and gifted her art to friends and family members, but had not shared it widely with the public.
One of her favourite paintings that she has chosen to feature in the gallery this autumn depicts a pair of worn work boots. Fittingly, the pieces she’s displayed there include a variety of fall colours. Verboom loves painting birds of prey, some of which are featured in the Showcase Gallery now.
Another piece that draws her attention is the “resting cowboy” she painted.
“I love that our Cariboo life is real people with real jobs,” she said. “A lot of people [around here] are blue-collar, hard-working people. That’s how I was raised. I just love trying to make that come across, [those] everyday kind of actions, seeing the beauty that’s within those actions.”
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Verboom’s work is deeply grounded in the environment that surrounds her and simultaneously inspired by everyday scenes in the natural world.
Particularly, Verboom is inspired by her life at the Gang Ranch, where she works as a bookkeeper and lives off-grid.
“We produce all of our own power. We have phone lines going out there now, but that’s it.”
The lifestyle caters to her artistic endeavours and allows Verboom plenty of time to paint.
“I’ve always loved remote living. Now it’s wonderful that I work so close to where I live but I still have that rustic lifestyle.”
Her goal is not for her paintings to look like photographs, but for the work to portray what she calls “loose realism.”
“I want my paintings to have a slight looseness to them, where brushstrokes can still be seen to embody light, darkness, emotion, or movement,” she explained.
Verboom utilizes loose realism in her ink wash and acrylic paintings but primarily paints portraits in ink because of the simplicity granted by greyscale.
On the other hand, she enjoys using acrylic to emulate the texture and colours of feathers and fur in the wildlife she paints, focusing on the depths of the muted tones she is drawn to.
Verboom has been painting for most of her life and was motivated by a particularly inspirational high-school art teacher.
“I learned how to look at things. Instead of seeing the object and the individual aspects of it, learning how to break it into the different shapes. That’s how I learned to paint, learning to look at something to block it out then build upon itself.”
This September, Verboom participated in the Studio 2 Studio self-guided art tour and she is also a member of the Parkside Art Gallery. She currently has a series of seven pieces of wood at Rustic Elements Flowers and Gifts in the South Cariboo Mall.
“Come November, I’ll be showing at the Gecko Tree Cafe in Williams Lake,” she said, adding that she’ll also feature her work at the Williams Lake Medieval Market.
To purchase any of the art featured by Verboom in the Showcase Gallery this month, contact her by phone at 250-395-0338 or by email at averboompainting@gmail.com. She also has a website, averboompainting.com where she accepts Visa, Mastercard, and Debit.
raven.nyman@100milefreepress.net
