The painting looks at you from across the room at the Chase Gallery.
Elise Doane’s acrylic vision of a Halifax Harbour sunrise, inspired by a Sherman Hines photograph, is a magical, masterful painting full of dreamy, varied orange light contrasted with deep foreground blues and blacks. Doane’s painting won the Pauline Manning Award in the Contemporary Arts Society’s 49th exhibit on view through May 31 at the Nova Scotia Archives.
This large and varied show has 95 paintings – abstracts, florals, landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes – by 35 artists.
There are a couple of unusual pieces including Chris Park’s coloured pencil renderings of Freeman’s Little New York and King of Donairs, highly detailed and exquisite, and JoAnne Muise’s watercolour and wood paintings constructed out of tiny wooden slats like popsicle sticks. This medium is perfect for a picture of a fishing village with grey shingled sheds and the light moving over the water.
There are some great florals including Lilacs in Blue Vase, acrylic, by Joanne MacDonald, and Pink Rose, oil, by Tina Kim, who drafts an amazing architecture of petals.
The painting Mother-in-Law, not yours! is a maelstrom of colour and dramatic emotion that, in fact, could be my mother-in-law. Sheila C. Taylor brings order to abstraction in a clean, geometric piece of hot oranges and yellows contrasted with darker tones.
Images range from beautiful interiors including The Sylvia Hotel Lobby, Vancouver, acrylic, by Joy Matthews, of antique furniture with views to trees and mountain; The Big One by JoAnne Muise, a vivid watercolour of a leaping, hooked fish with a desperate eye and great momentum in its body; and Bush Island, pastel, Rae Smith, a perfect picture of a winding country road leading up to a blue-roofed house. The perfect red cherries in Tim Kim’s oil still life pop out against a bright yellow background.
CAS president Kathy Richards, who speaks passionately about the group, exhibits two highly contrasting paintings, a strong watercolour painting of a black swan with a wonderfully painted eye, strength of purpose in the body and elegant neck, and her more formal, crisp and impeccably detailled acrylic cityscape of Urban Cottage Antiques and Collectibles in downtown Halifax.
There are many award-winners in this juried show:
Honourable mentions go to Green Vibe/Ambiance Verte, mixed media, Simone Comeau Geddry’s evocative, organic abstract of a cloud form in greens and glistening gold; Ready for Jam, oil, Tina Kim’s steel bowl full of strawberries with reflections at its silvery base; Barrington Street, watercolour and pen, Jeehye Choi’s beautifully rendered, old stone house; Prince’s Lodge at Dawn, Joanne MacDonald’s acrylic painting with gorgeous light; Key West Memories, watercolour, Barbara DeLory, teeming with fish in purples and orange; Visitors to Peggy’s Cove, acrylic, Elise Doane; Black Swan, watercolour, Kathy Richards; Joie de Vivre, an acrylic painting of joyful street musicians, Susan Cairns; Maison Acadienne, watercolour, Peggy Taylor; and Rosa Rugosa, watercolour, Mary Hill.
Helen M.S. Lee took the Mayor’s Award for Morning Light, acrylic (reference photo by Zehava Power), an acrylic painting of a glass vase of peonies, full of light and passionate pinks, while Chris Park won the Louisa Letson Award for his coloured pencil image, King of Donairs. And, as seen above, Elise Doane won the Pauline Manning Award.
The gallery, 6016 University Ave., Halifax, is open Monday to Friday, 8:30 to 4:30; Wednesday, 8:30 to 8; Saturday, 10 to 3.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Art, contemporary-art-society, landscape, painting, watercolour
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