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Parkside Art Gallery showcasing work of renowned Canadian artist

Gallery show profiling Audrey Garwood, considered one of the greats in Canadian landscape painting

The paintings of a renowned Canadian artist are on display at Parkside Art Gallery this month. 

The show, named One Artist's World: Paintings by Audrey Garwood showcases around 24 of Garwood's stunning landscape paintings. The show has been curated by Colette French, a former student of Garwood's and the executor of her estate since she passed away in 2004. French said that One Artist's World: Paintings by Audrey Garwood was based on a similar show she put together in Clinton. 

"A lot of the volunteers and staff from Parkside came down and saw a show that I put up of Audrey's work in Clinton last summer, and Barb Brown very kindly offered me this space," French explained. Brown is the gallery director of the Parkside Art Gallery. 

Garwood was a Canadian landscape artist who received acclaim over the years of her career. Born in 1927 in Toronto she graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1951. She was the first woman and youngest person to win the Forster Award of the Ontario Society of Artists and earned a scholarship to the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris - two classical and art schools in Europe. 

French said that Garwood followed in the footsteps of the Group of Seven, a group of Canadian landscape painters most active between 1920 and 1933. There had been a gap between the Group of Seven and the new generation of artists that painted both traditional and abstract landscapes. Garwood was one of those who experimented with abstract landscapes. 

"She did it mostly in her prints that you're not seeing here, but you can see the influence in her paintings. They're very expressionist. They're not literal. Even though she's painting from life - she painted and drew from life, and took photographs as well for her whole life," French explained. 

French first met Garwood as one of her students at Central Technical School in 1965. 

"She never showed us any of her work. She paid attention to what we were doing, and she made us work. We had to - she was very strict. We had to draw, and I took that out with me out into the world," French recalls.

French herself is an artist who has been showcasing her own work since 1984 and began working with Garwood in 1995 up until her death. 

The art that is on display at the Parkside Art Gallery is some of the best work that Garwood painted. 

"Every one of those paintings stands up and holds water - like these works on a giant works on paper - they're fantastic," French praised, pointing specifically to Garwood's painting Inukshuk (Arctic) - an acryllic painting that was done on paper. "Look at the use of white space here - hardly any painters do that. They can't help it - they've got to fill everything in." 

French said that she was very fortunate that the members of the Parkside Art Gallery from the gallery had visited the show in Clinton and gave her a chance to bring Garwood's work to 100 Mile House. 

"It's an excellent gallery, and I've seen very, very fun work there," French said.

She encourages the community to visit the show, to have fun and to have a look at something wonderful that you cannot see anywhere else.

The exhibition lasts until Feb. 9. Garwood's paintings are on sale - and people can come in and purchase the paintings directly from the Parkside Art Gallery. 



About the Author: Misha Mustaqeem

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