The Vernon Public Art Gallery is about to present a body of work by former North Okanagan resident and senior Canadian artist Joyce Devlin.
Currently based in Ottawa, Devlin’s exhibition, Along the Way, consists of a selection of paintings from 1970 to 2011.
“The Vernon Public Art Gallery is fortunate to hold some of Joyce Devlin’s pieces in our permanent collection, one which is of such significant size,” said VPAG executive director Dauna Kennedy Grant. “We will be unveiling this painting to residents of the North Okanagan for the first time on May 26.”
Inside the Garden consists of a series of panels of a continuous painting measuring six-by-36-feet in total. It takes up the space on one of the walls in the VPAG’s Topham Brown gallery.
Accompanying the piece will be a selection of works painted throughout Devlin’s long career, depicting her journey as an artist, specifically her time in the North Okanagan.
The 2012 artist-in-residence at the Mackie Lake House, Devlin (née Noble) grew up in the Lavington area and studied art with the late Jessie Topham Brown in Vernon before going to the Vancouver School of Arts (now Emily Carr) to study with Jack Shadbolt and other notable artists.
Despite her experimental paintings, Devlin devoted herself to a wide variety of subjects and developed interest in portraiture, figurative painting, landscape, and symbolic imagery.
“The selection of her work in this exhibition contains portraits of people whom Devlin interacted with while living in Vernon, examples of landscape paintings, and semi-abstract works,” said Kennedy Grant. “Some of the paintings in the exhibition are from the gallery’s permanent collection, with a few additional works borrowed from the Mackie Lake House collection and one large-scale work borrowed from the artist.”
The opening reception for Devlin’s Along the Way is May 26 from 6 to 8 p.m. Also opening are works by Mackie Lake House artist-in-residence Luis Fuentes and the UBC Okanagan’s BFA graduation exhibition, Stranger in Your Pocket. Devlin’s artist talk will take place May 28 at 1 p.m.