All in the Family: Janice Leonard, Wes Fraser, Ineke Graham exhibit opens July 6 at NS Archives

Nova Scotia artists Wes Fraser, Ineke Graham and Janice Leonard are exhibiting together in a show all about family – in dramatically different ways – at the Chase Gallery, Nova Scotia Archives, 6016 University Ave., Halifax, July 6 to 28.

Bloodline, Mythica and Pieces of the Past open with a reception July 6, 5 to 7 p.m. Gallery hours are: Monday, Tuesday, 8:30 to 4:30; Wednesday, 8:30 to 8; Thursday, Friday, 8:30 to 4.30; Saturday, 10 to 3. (Opens at 10.30 a.m. first Thursday of every month.)

Leonard, exhibiting in Pieces of the Past, is a landscape painter whose luminous, poetic paintings are inspired by her family history and her connection to the land in Paradise, Nova Scotia.

Wes Fraser, who is Leonard’s son, is a 2012 NSCAD University graduate who did a double minor in drawing and illustration. After freelancing for seven years he moved to Montreal in 2019 to study concept art in the video games industry.

In Mythica he exhibits a collection of multimedia, fine art pieces largely inspired by the pen and ink drawings of late 19^th/early 20th century book illustrator Arthur Rackham and the figurative work of Gustav Klimt and John Waterhouse.

Ineke Graham, who trained at the Ontario College of Art and Design and in Rotterdam, came to Nova Scotia through Pier 21 at 17 in 1954 and founded Studio 21 Fine Art in 1983. She exhibits paintings of people from her family going back to her grandparents and forward to her grandchildren in Bloodline.

Leonard, a NSCAD University graduate, is inspired by 18^th and 19^th century romantic landscape painting; Graham by German expressionism and fauvism.

Both are passionate about creating dynamic surfaces and capturing emotion. Leonard is exhibiting mixed media constructed paintings and works dating from the 1980s to 2017. Graham has been actively painting since 1959 and her earliest work on exhibit – a small drawing of her son David – dates from 1962. Fraser is also exhibiting older pieces that are imbued with his passion for dark fantasy.