This month the Foyer Gallery presents two exhibits, Sea to Sky Landscapes featuring abstract fabric paintings and Saints and Samplers, showcasing mosaics and textile collage. Inspired by the elemental beauty of the Sea to Sky region, Sarah Symes explores the interplay and connection between land, sea and sky in a range of abstract fabric paintings making up Sea to Sky Landscapes. Rather than working from photos or sketches, Symes says, “I work from memory, opening myself up to the inextricable link between the subject and my inner emotional landscape.”
Continuously trying to invent new techniques and develop new ideas, Symes has been working as a professional artist for 10 years and aspires to recreate her internal experiences of places and people outwardly through her artwork.
Aqua, chalky greys and a tonal medley of soft blues merge in this series, heavily influenced by the colours of Howe Sound. For the composition, each stretcher includes two pieces of background fabric, specifically placed to section the picture plane horizontally.
To create the “sky texture,” Symes dyed fabric by soaking it in paint and then unconventionally left it outside to let the rain do its magic. Her intuitive process continued allowing random dye marks to inspire the landscape.
Finally, with silhouettes in mind to suggest recognizable landforms, she layered smaller triangular pieces of cut fabric appliquéd to the background resulting in spectacular panoramas of speculative geometry.
Symes will generously be giving away signed prints of her S2S Landscape No. 12 to the first 50 guests to attend the reception.
Mosaics & textile collage
Sibling artists Cathryn Atkinson and Julie Wasson reunite for a sisterly-love display in the cases titled Saints and Samplers.
Here there is no rivalry but there are a lot of contrasts. Atkinson presents her mosaics juxtaposed Wasson’s textile collage.
One piece, a diptych called Two Flowers was created by the duo.
Wasson used various types of recovered material from the 1950s on hers and Atkinson corresponded with a classical inspired mosaic blossom.
Wasson graduated from the MFA program at the University of Manitoba School of Art, and has been an exhibiting textile artist in Winnipeg since 1993.
In this series Atkinson included fossils for the first time combining them with gold-leaf tiles and smalti (Italian mosaic glass sourced in Venice) historically used in old European church ceilings..
Meet the artists at their opening reception on Feb. 7 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Squamish Public Library. The Foyer Gallery is located at the entrance to the library.
