The Denman Island Gallery’s final opening of the season will catch the warm afterglow of late summer on the evening of Aug. 23. Please join us for Mary Hicks’ and Leslie Dunsmore’s show, Catching the Light.
Light: the direction from which it comes, the time of day, where you stand, the interplay of light and shadow, the products you use to capture it in your medium; all these affect the work of all artists, but especially the sculptures and paintings of Mary Hicks and Leslie Dunsmore. They have wanted to do a show together for some time and luckily for us they are presenting it now, aptly titled Catching the Light.
Art photography was Mary’s primary medium in her formative years, and she was most often drawn to the metal sculptures in the centre of Chicago, where she lived. Metal held and reflected the light and the moment, the longest. Textured bronze, copper, and gold reflected and fractured the light and revealed changing qualities a photograph could not convey, and this, combined with a desire to move beyond the two dimensional form, led to a decision to sculpt in metal. Her work for this show uses mostly copper as a medium, and involves the abstract expression and exploration of the interplay between colour, form, texture, and metalworking techniques.
Leslie Dunsmore’s paintings capture the absolute stillness of nature. She says she is always seeking silence, but she has to have light in order to find it. In each of her preliminary sketches, she draws an arrow to show where the light is coming from; its source, intensity, clarity and colour make the difference between the washed out shades of high noon and the deep shadow effect of early evening. Her subject is landscape, and her work explores the interaction between landscape and imagination, full of bright colour, crisp edges, and decorative markings that capture the moment where outer and inner landscapes meet.
Unknown to each other, Mary and Leslie each chose the same title for one of their pieces: An Interior View. Both Leslie’s painting and Mary’s woven panel are rectangular in shape; Mary’s, a three dimensional copper sculpture which draws the eye into a luminous interior, and Leslie’s, brightly coloured hills and meadows with a contrasting cave-like interior under their surface, which, like Mary’s, draws us into a richly coloured chasm.
Mary is presenting a small sculpture series of ten or eleven woven panels, and possibly some larger mixed media pieces. Leslie will present 10 or 11 new paintings.
If you can’t make it, the gallery is open every day from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The artists are often in attendance.
— Denman Island Gallery
