NS reviews

Reviews of theatre and art in Nova Scotia and beyond

Tag Archive for ‘painting’

For the Love of Italian Gardens: Karen Kulyk at Secord Gallery to Sept. 26

Trapped at home by the pandemic, Karen Kulyk missed her beloved Italy so much that she decided to travel there through paint. Physically, she was at her easel in her Dartmouth home; imaginatively, she was in Italy where she had spent close to 10 years hiking in the country’s northern and central areas in both spring and fall. Painting “brought me back to a kind of peace,” says the cheerful, […]

Continue Reading →

Tranquil, contemplative beauty in A Sense of Time at Secord Gallery

Standing in front of Janice Leonard’s landscapes and Mary Reardon’s still life paintings, on view at Secord Gallery to Nov. 22, I feel my shoulders drop and my breath regulate. In these turbulent, worrisome times, their exhibit, A Sense of Time, is a wonderfully relaxing show. These two artists, who are friends, have very different styles and genres but both create contemplative art about memory and time. The two give […]

Continue Reading →

Wildly Different: Heather Sayeau’s The Garden and Halifax’s My Name is Yours

There are two birthday party pictures in wildly different art shows this month: Brandt Eisner’s sad clown and balloon installation Best Wishes in My Name is Yours at The Chase Gallery in Halifax and Heather Sayeau’s hot, floral painting Happy Birthday in The Garden at the Lunenburg School of the Arts. Both shows have a lot of colour but their intentions couldn’t be further apart. My Name Is Yours, produced […]

Continue Reading →

Nipped in the Bud: a powerful journey from darkness to light by Gillian McCulloch

Nipped in the Bud is a beautiful, shattering, important and healing show about experiencing and surviving sexual assault. The exhibit, at the Chase Gallery, Nova Scotia Archives, Halifax, to June 28, should be widely seen and displayed for its message and artistry. Nova Scotia artist Gillian McCulloch brings her enormous skills at realism and multimedia techniques to over 42 works in a journey from darkness to light, from fear to […]

Continue Reading →

The Amazing World of Alan Syliboy at Dalhousie Art Gallery to Aug. 11

Open the door to a wonderful world of hot colour, celebratory spirit and amazing imagery in Alan Syliboy: the Journey So Far at Dalhousie Art Gallery to August 11. The gallery’s retrospective for the revered, widely collected and much loved Mi’kmaw artist is Syliboy’s largest show to date and already drawing high numbers, as well as repeat visitors, says the show’s curator and gallery director Pamela Edmonds. It opens officially […]

Continue Reading →

Contemporary Art Society’s 49th big on colour and light

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. […]

Continue Reading →

A Fantastic Connectivity of Colour, Movement and Soul in reView

Artist websites: marybarnardfitzgeraldart.com Shown in reView, clockwise from top left, Along Mill Road, Christiane Poulin; The Universe Within, acrylic on canvas, Monika Wright; Glimpse of Aqua/Teal Stairs Between Paintings, oil and acrylic on board, Mary Barnard Fitzgerald; Jawbone, bone, plaster, dyes, Genny Killin; Waves, wool on linen, Carla Middelburg. Colour, pattern and content weave in and out with startling connectivity in reView, a five-woman exhibit at the Chase Gallery, Nova […]

Continue Reading →

Mind and Media: Sydney Blum and Alex Livingston at Studio 21

Deer by Calm Water, by Alex Livingston, archival pigment ink print, 47 ” x 65.5,” at Studio 21 Fine Art, 5431 Doyle St., Halifax. Alex Livingston’s new digital paintings of deer in landscapes play with the mind. What is real and what isn’t? These beautiful, pastoral images created solely on a computer refer to traditional art forms of photography, printmaking and painting. The bodies of the deer appear to be […]

Continue Reading →