An exhibition marking Semiahmoo Arts Society’s 50th anniversary is a vivid illustration of the organization’s motto: Art for Everyone.
The show, SAS Members and Friends: 50 Years!, is co-presented by the City of White Rock and currently at Landmark Pop-uptown Gallery at Central Plaza. It offers a rich demonstration of the wide range of artistic expression taking place on the Semiahmoo Peninsula.
Open until April 26, the exhibit offers visitors everything from painting, photography and ceramic work to fabric art and mixed media pieces, and work that veers in style from traditional landscapes, florals, portraiture and other representational pieces to reinterpretations of old masters, the purely fanciful and the more abstract.
The society, an arts charity organization that evolved from the original White Rock and District Community Arts Council, prides itself on having provided arts and cultural services to White Rock since 1974.
Latterly it has been based at the South Surrey Recreation and Arts Centre, where it offers art classes and drop-ins, plus formal exhibitions at the Turnbull Gallery, while teaming with the City of White Rock to mount occasional showcase exhibits at the Landmark Pop-Uptown Gallery.
READ ALSO: Semiahmoo Arts opens members show
The current crop of some 22 artist members and friends featured in the 50th anniversary show is evidence that the vigour and passion of local creativity has not diminished over the years.
Doug Alexander’s colourful acrylic abstracts, with such diverse inspiration as the isle of Capri and sound waves on a screen, lend themselves to multiple interpretations.
Scarlett Ballantyne’s watercolour portraits evoke a world of glamour and fashion, while her ‘quilt’ of watercolour paintings printed on cotton provides a more whimsical exercise in design.
Linda Bickerton-Ross’ photographic explorations of colour and shutter-speed effects result in contemplative, mysterious, almost entirely abstract works.
Norm Carriere’s oil-on-canvas paintings offer highly individual reinterpretations and variations on master works from the past, including Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Linda Carswell-Bland’s textile and fabric art works include renditions of pixellated photographs, photographs on fibre and even a kimono created from silk, cotton, rayon and beading.
Barbara Cooper’s photography is distinguished by her artistic eye – finding unusual and evocative compositions captured in locations both close to home and in travels all over the world.
Barbara Crisp’s photo-derived oil-on-canvas paintings offer an arresting, almost surreal, eyewitness perspective of summer wildfires sweeping the Okanagan viewed from across lake waters.
KJ Forrest’s attention to detailed line work, in an acrylic portrait of a bear (Mama) and fanciful ink-and-board illustrations of slightly bemused angels, is both meticulous and involving.
Vickie Hebert’s uncompromising oil paint and pastel and acrylic works include the magnetic portrait Ego in Red, while her grouping of felting-wool-on-foam birds shows an entirely different side to her artistic personality.
Therese Joseph’s loosely painted but warmly coloured florals (Rebellious Old Ladies, Sassy Willows and Sunny Rascals) manage to imbue what could have been static subjects with an abundance of charm and character.
Emily Kuch’s glazed stoneware pieces bring an agreeable sense of quirky humour to what could have been simply functional work.
Photographer Jon Lavoie seems to focus on works — whether a bear cub smelling a flower, or an enlarged moon over COVID-deserted night streets — that bring a heightened perception of reality.
Fae Lukacs’ unusual and creative colouring book designs, ‘for all ages,’ imply a strongly meditative component to the simple act of filling in spaces with coloured pencils, markers and crayons.
Carla Maskall’s most recent stylized landscapes suggest a mythical and magical subtext for familiar White Rock and Crescent Beach waterfront scenes.
Ross Nicholson’s beautifully colourful shawls and scarves are examples of wearable art, carefully woven in wool, nylon and mohair.
Melissa Peacock’s wildly creative series of watercolour-on-paper paintings borrow something from cartoon and anime art in following the adventures of a lonely cat who has built a satellite out of discarded junk.
In Cool Waters Run Deep, Elayne Preston has used oil pastels to create an imaginary, calming mountain landscape.
Linda Quigley’s misty, impressionistic acrylic technique lends a nostalgic atmosphere to a kitchen still-life and a study of a rambling, white corner-lot house backed by dense forest land.
Rachel Sproule’s precise vision informs both her stoneware adorned with cedar and pine designs and her stoneware mugs, along with her ink-on-wood hemispheres incorporating map-like depictions of the continents.
Lynn Wade’s sure touch and sophisticated palette are evident in both an abstract conveying an impression of an individual personality and in her subtle riverside landscapes.
Susan Wade’s mixed media works, Artemisia, Decadence and Enchantment, appropriate historic imagery in ways that evoke a whole new set of resonances for the viewer.
Lynda Wylde’s fascinatingly ambiguous imagery is derived directly from her own dreams and meditations, but may evoke a host of other interpretations from each viewer.
The Landmark Pop-Uptown Gallery is located at 15140 North Bluff Rd. Opening hours for this exhibit are Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.