On Land and Sea

For many Canadians, the summer season allows for a rekindled relationship with our natural milieu. We spend more time outside and away from our homes in the summertime, exploring parks, trails, water bodies and mountaintops. The landscape surrounding us is intrinsic to our Canadian identity, and for centuries the artists among us have drawn inspiration from these diverse and striking vistas. 

Gibson Fine Art is pleased to present our latest exhibition "On Land and Sea," featuring the work of four gallery artists, each offering contemporary interpretations of our landscape: Shelley Mansel, Verne Busby, Joel Mara and Jim Park.

Specializing in large atmospheric landscape paintings and ocean scapes, Shelley Mansel masterfully depicts the sparkling sunlight, the roll of the water and the flickering warmth of stretches of the sea. The water depicted in these paintings is unconstrained by shoreline or artificial borders: Shelley adeptly captures the purity of water surfaces in all of their delightful manifestations.

Shelley currently lives and works in Upper Musquodoboit, in the rural countryside of Nova Scotia.

Busby’s work presents a narrative on the unencumbered beauty of Alberta’s countryside through the use of sweeping line and form and multi-layered harmonic hues.

Robust brush strokes offset with relenting softness create harmony through discord -- a theme reflective of the natural contrasts found in the subject matter that Verne’s work continues to celebrate. Bringing to life the abstract glory of the change of seasons, the artist’s work reflects nuances of shifting daylight and subtle eye movement.

Verne lives and works in St Albert, AB.

 

Vancouver-based Joel Mara utilizes his visceral connection to raw, untamed nature to create soothing,participatory experiences of art, colour and landscape.

Joel is drawn to the drama and immediacy of nature. In his wide-ranging depictions of Western Canadian scenery, Joel translates a yearning for a sense of stillness and observation that commands the observer's eye.

The local landscape forms an integral part of Jim Park's practice. Park sees paint as a language: the memory of lived experience merging with the pictorial possibilities on the canvas. His paintings are records of this convergence -- memory, perception, and emotional experience made real.

While Jim draws inspiration from photographs, sketches, and field notes, his works are deeply sensitive to his connection with dream state. His images thus exist as a form of personal collage. He invents and synthesizes as much as he represents.

Jim lives and work in Vancouver, BC.