The two new exhibits featured this month at the Terrace Art Gallery transform the upper and lower galleries into vivid, colourful displays of movement and energy.
Art lovers walking down into the upper gallery first see ‘Expressions of Haida Gwaii’ by Masset-based artist Maryanne Wettlaufer. Her work with oils and watercolour paints capture various locations throughout the archipelago, from the furthest tip north at Rose Spit to the southernmost point at Cape St. James.
In Haida Gwaii the seasons and weather patterns can change on a dime, Wettlaufer said, and she found herself inspired by the swift fluctuation of the islands’ moods.
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“Haida Gwaii is very up in your face, and I try to depict that,” she said at the gallery’s opening on Sept. 7. “I try to capture that energy in the sky or the clouds… the way the branches grow, the moss grows, by spending time out in the forest. Capturing that collision of what the senses experience and how your heart reacts, the energy and elation of being out in nature.”
Finishing their tour of Haida Gwaii, visitors can walk down into the lower gallery, where Smithers-based artist Sarah Northcott’s ‘Momentum’ electrifies the walls of the space.
She uses a unique technique crafted over the last decade by using acrylic paint and polymer glue to build layers, scraping off areas as she goes to let the underbelly of the piece show through. She said this process allows her to mould and rework the piece to reflect and accentuate a particular feeling.
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“To me, I’m playing with ideas of energy and movement… how a specific point in time affects you,” Northcott said. “When I use the glue, or the polymer, it’s very immediate. I can look at a piece and see that I was confident there, my gestures were strong and playful, or I can look at it and go ‘oh, I second guessed myself’ – the glue is timid, so it expresses itself differently.”
The two exhibits will be on display from Sept. 7 to Sept. 29 at the Terrace Art Gallery.
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