Lisa Riehl

I have always been Inspired by Nature. I love to simplify what I’m seeing and translate it into the feeling of being outside with nothing between me and nature, or the feeling of tranquility and vibrancy that is all around me. Nature’s beauty is all around us to see, touch and hear. It has a way of affecting our moods and it can help us to change our way of thinking for the better, from negative to positive. I believe that being exposed to Nature’s beauty can have a positive effect on our lives, in the way we look at things and the way we feel about ourselves. Perhaps my paintings can help bring this feeling of wonder and peace to others.

Each painting I create feels like a poem that is made visible. I can’t just give them boring names - they deserve so much more! So I title each painting with a phrase that, at least to me, evokes incredible meaning in my heart.

Kristina Boardman

I am endlessly intrigued with painting stones - the varied color, texture and beautiful markings. I am often holding them as I paint, and they give me a feeling of peace and tranquility. I create a simple line drawing as a place to begin on the canvas, with the composition coming from my imagination. I then use the actual stones as reference for shape and tone and interesting features. It is my own version of what I see along Canada’s beautiful coastlines.

Shelley Wuitchik

For me, painting with encaustic creates a state of totipotentia: a latin term meaning the ability for all things. Encaustic painting is filled with such potential. Since the medium is incredibly malleable and fluid, I am able to mix it with vibrant pigments and embed sculptural elements. I seek to illustrate the flow of water, the dense weight of the earth and the flashy and volatile qualities of fire. I hope the luminosity and movement of my work offers the viewer the same spontaneity and transformation I experience as I paint.

Rose Tanner

Birds sing, dance, fight, fly, court, breed, claim territory, pair for life, play the field and fool around. They hold funerals, have socials, eat fermented berries and perform mating rituals that leave me baffled. Many people do not see birds because they are small and fleeting, but with my paintings I want the viewer to connect with the birds, to see into their eyes and realize there is much more than expected. I hope my work inspires people to spend time outdoors and find a reason to be in nature.

Susie Cipolla

The myriad techniques employed in my creative process are as varied as the themes that inspire me. While layering opaque paints and transparent glazes to create depth, my signature darks from the blend of my favourite transparent colours will frequently appear as the base. Keeping the palette relatively limited, I work with neutrals derived from the opposites on the colour wheel, balancing the values, temperature, shapes, forms and textures to create pieces that range from subtle monochromatic semi-abstract expressions to dynamic, purely abstract visual raptures of saturated colours.

Lynn Harnish

I love to create; I always have. My medium has changed over the past 30 years but my passion for the artistic process continues. In my studio my latest mediums are Cold Wax Mixed Media and Encaustic. I love allowing each piece to unfold and emerge. The paint, the wax, the tools all give me a feeling of being both the artist and the art itself. I love the smell of beeswax and the feeling of the wax on my hands, resting under my finger nails. Through the process of encaustic what emerges is often unpredictable. Each piece I have created with purpose and yet the magic of the medium has lead me to these final images. There's always a sense of surprise and wonder. I am creating happy accidents when things develop differently than I had expected... and that's the magic.

Kato Rempel

Figure painting is my primary passion. My figurative oil paintings often embody a sense of longing for the unknown. We feel this in the dichotomy between what we see and what exists in our own inner world of our mind. In pushing subject matter, my figurative works range from expression of intimacy and connectedness to a narrative of strength and blossoming womanhood.

Dale Byhre

From rocky shorelines and the working boats along the West Coast, to the fighting ships of the World War II, my strong appreciation for both ships and the sea compels me to depict them with accuracy and reverence.

Eunmi Conacher

I describe myself as a contemporary impressionist and expressionist artist. My desire is to create paintings which bring energy to the canvas. My use of color, form, and texture is intuitive. My hope is that the viewers connect emotionally with the painting in their own way. The result I strive for is a painting from the heart.

Laila Jensen

I’m inspired by the outrageous yet casual beauty that is all around us all the time. Nature is very extravagant. Texture, form and especially line are elements I love to convey and distort. And exploring the secret life of trees is the perfect muse for me.
Mixed media is my artistic home. I usually create in layers, starting with washes, plasters, pastes and all kinds of paper – origami, textured fibre, tissue, etc. I have a huge collection of papers and rarely leave an art store without a new one. I also use metallic leaf, ink, ink pencils, pastes, gels, chalk pastels and charcoal. Each painting has its own story and back story. And through the layers emerge mystical and charming little surprises. I hope to entertain my viewers and collectors as much as I was entertained by the creation of the piece.

Sue A. Miller

My paintings beckon a return to the forgotten memory of our origins and to what collectively binds all living species. These ecologies - the forests, wetlands, and waterways give me a sense of awe and provide me with solace, grounding me to a web of interconnected spaces whose beauty and complexity I find endlessly fascinating. Painting provides me with a natural, quiet language to convey this profound connection.

I am driven to spur an intimate connection between the art and the viewer, hoping to ignite a direction towards positive environmental change. My work continues to be a process of psycho-geography, an investment of the self into our natural surroundings, which ultimately includes the viewer.

Aleksandra Kalinic

To me painting is a powerful way to grow inside, communicate, explore and be free. Through creative process I get to know myself and the world better, and strive to express emotion and beauty of the moment.

Painting old towns, houses, roofs, windows feels like special kind of traveling. In some quiet, unobtrusive way they hide so many different lives and destinies but also have a life of their own. I am inspired by charming places I have visited and by people I met there, performers, dancers and passers-by on the street. Dancers fascinate me with their passion for beauty of the movement and joy of performing.

Using playful palette I strive to create poetic work filled with life, tenderness and a dose of hidden nostalgia and childlike imagination. I want to create the place where everything is connected in some beautiful way.

Through my portraits I study emotions and personalities as well as my relationship with the person if I know them well. I realize how fragile life is and treasure every moment I have with people I love so I challenge myself to see how well I will be able to express my love for them through my paintings.

For me art is a fascinating journey, with always present thought about simultaneity of beauty and fragility of life. 

Claire Christinel

I am inspired by the quality of light and shadow on an object, creating beauty and drama. An ordinary object turning from the light, can become an extraordinary object when interpreted in paint. That, combined with the colour, pattern or mood of a scene inspires me to want to capture that moment in paint. My passion is to create a perfect balance of realism and painterly interpretation in my works

Sharon Stone

I have been leaning towards abstraction the more I paint and even when I’m doing representational paintings and landscapes, there tends to be an element of abstraction in them. Shapes and colors really appeal to me. I love geometric forms and they appear throughout my paintings. The designs behind my paintings often emerge from focusing my attention on negative painting in the backspace and interesting color relationships, resulting in works of art that weave in and out of abstraction.

Jutta Kaiser

My work is purely intuitive - conceived from memory or mood, interpreted and expressed on canvas.

Following a dialogue between color and shape my theme slowly emerges.
A willingness to follow my impulses and being open to continuous revision enables me to express my creative imagination.

Mixed Media is the best way for me to realize my goal by embracing experimentation and using myriad materials to achieve a variety of texture. My palette consists mainly of warm colors including Acrylide Yellow, Alizarin Crimson and Paynes Grey. It is my layering technique of numerous washes that lends all the colors a greater sense of depth.

My work is not contentious. It is meant to elicit a “feel good” response in the viewer.

Ed Oldfield

For 30 years I have explored, experimented, and questioned the wonders of Raku. I am starting to have a grasp on the process but am reluctant to say I know what I am doing as such a bold statement is sure to throw off one’s Karma. There are so many variables in the process it is difficult to duplicate any given result. I sometimes refer to it as Heart Break Pottery.
My work is heavily influenced by nature and most frequently by the ocean. I have spent a lifetime on the shores of the Salish Sea and it has provided me with much inspiration. My high School Art Teacher, William Calder, encouraged me when I was young and he was my mentor into university. To him I owe my teaching career as well as my art career. I will be forever grateful to him for his direction. Edward J. Hughes and Emily Carr are two of my favorite B.C. Artists. I try to learn something new each day as I continue to experiment with the infinite world of Raku.

Gail Johnson

I feel privileged to have so much to paint - such beauty and rich, grounded experiences to draw from. I follow my brush . . . and taste the color.

Susan Woolgar

My artistic vision is being continuously refreshed, using visual language growingly unconstrained by the elements of realism. By abstracting the landscape and thus conveying the essence of a place or an idea of the subject matter being depicted, I strive to breathe energy into each piece by rendering forms and shapes with a sense of effortless spontaneity, while my use of colour becomes the key instrument in creating mood and evoking emotion.

Christi York

Foraging for materials within the seasons, my work is quite literally tied to the cycle of the natural world. Basketmaking has a communal history in nearly every culture on the planet. When I weave, I feel linked to this collective history of civilization; a time when we had respect and a deep, generational knowledge about the self sustaining systems of the earth.

Ian Lowe

My art is a translation of the environment that surrounds me. The energy I receive from nature produces a desire for me to create and share my interpretations with others. Many of my sculptures intertwine mediums such as, wood, rock and steel.
Combining the natural elements allows me to feel connected to my subjects. Collecting these pieces is part of the process.
Many years of welding and hand forging steel has unraveled into what you see in my art today, limitless expression of multiple mediums.
Sharing has always been a very important part of who I am as a person and art has gifted me this ability.

Sandy Terry

Nature is my inspiration. Flowers often become metaphors for me influenced by music, dance and light. I delight in their tenacity to spring forth into the world from bud to emergence as they reveal their delicate beauty while in full bloom. They become soulful expressions of sensuous femininity, representing the circle of life and renewal itself. I am drawn to capture that moment of full bloom, the simple elegance in the turn of a leaf, subtle shift in color and the radiance of light.