British Columbia is home to a wide variety of artists who depict everything from the beautiful B.C. backwater to the sprawling urban hub of Vancouver.
The Armstrong-Spallimcheen Museum and Art Gallery celebrates this variety with Progressions, an exhibit comprised of a collection of paintings by Ann Willsie and Jeff Wilson opening Aug. 10.
Progressions illustrates the professional development of Willsie and Wilson, who first exhibited together in 2013 at the Silk Purse Gallery in West Vancouver. At that time, they both lived on the coast and worked full-time.
While Wilson stayed in Vancouver, Willsie moved to the Okanagan, and both have gone on to paint full-time, exhibiting widely in a range of public galleries. This exhibition reviews Willsie’s and Wilson’s artistic development since that 2013 show, illustrating two painters from similar origins who have gone on to establish artistic careers under different settings in B.C. Their work reflects the great artistic opportunities available across the province, and will hopefully inspire anyone who wants to do the same.
Willsie is a modern-day impressionist whose oil paintings depict the splendour of the natural landscape she surrounds herself with, including both large-scale panoramic vistas of fields, marshes, forests, and mountains, as well as close-up florals, trees, and grasses. Her paintings are glimpses of a world that cannot be governed by man: the natural world. Willsie has been exhibiting her work for over 20 years across Canada, and her paintings are held in private collections around the world. Willsie now paints and teaches workshops at her studio, Studio Cerulean, in Lake Country.
Wilson is a self-taught Scottish-Canadian painter whose acrylic paintings tackle a range of subjects from working vehicles, neon signs, animal portraits, the Shetland Islands in Scotland, and the urbanscapes and people of Vancouver. His work has exhibited across a wide range of public galleries in B.C., Alberta, and Washington State, including Gibsons Public Art Gallery, the Smithers Art Gallery, the ACT Gallery, Okotoks Art Gallery, Bellingham City Hall, and the University of Washington Law School in Seattle.
The Armstrong-Spallumcheen Museum and Art Gallery (3415 Pleasant Valley Rd., Armstrong) will be hosting an opening reception of Progressions from 6 to 8 p.m. Aug. 10, with an illustrated artist talk at noon Aug. 11. The show runs from Aug. 10 to Sept. 2. The gallery is open daily 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.