Local artist Carollyne Sinclaire has three paintings in The Art Gallery Osoyoos’ newest exhibition, Image and Text. (Vanessa Broadbent photo)

By Vanessa Broadbent

Osoyoos Times

It’s one thing to appreciate an artist’s work but having a piece of writing to accompany it can heighten the experience and give a glimpse into the creator’s process.

That’s what local artist Carollyne Sinclaire found while putting together her submissions for The Art Gallery Osoyoos’ upcoming show Image and Text.

“It helps people to see behind the scenes of what’s going on, and also it helps them to see the artist’s point of view,” she said.

“When we look at a painting, it’s a subject and that subject goes inside us, but we don’t know what the subject really was that the artist saw and why they interpreted it the way they did.”

The idea for the Image and Text show was to find a piece of writing and then create an accompanying piece of artwork, inspired by the text, The Art Gallery Osoyoos curator Sue Whittaker said.

She told artists to think of something they read or heard that stayed in their heads and then paint a picture or make a piece of artwork to encapsulate it.

“I wanted to get something that would catch people’s eye,” Whittaker said. “Our January show is usually a bit of a hard sell; a lot of people are away and we don’t have a lot of tourism.”

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For her own piece, Whittaker chose lyrics to a song by Tom Waits, “Take it With Me.” They’re paired with old photographs of her mother.

A phrase about an old broken down car reminded her of a picture of the car her father built for her mother while they were dating. Another is of her mother’s home, like one Waits mentions.

However, not every piece in the exhibit resulted with the text being found first. Whittaker said that some artists completed a work and either wrote something or found a piece of writing that accompanied it.

“When I put something out like that I try to remove the blocks and make it as easy as possible. If it’s backwards, maybe that’s more interesting.”

That’s what happened with Sinclaire’s work. Two of her paintings are of beggars she met in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

They’re paired with a Spanish proverb – eyes that do not see, a heart that does not feel – which she felt was synonymous to many tourists’ experiences in third world countries.

“Often when tourists go to a place of great poverty, they see only the beauty of the cathedrals and the luxurious things, but these people are also in existence too.”

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The text to accompany Sinclair’s other painting, a chocolate éclair which is part of a larger series of paintings of doughnuts, was discovered in a dream where she remembered what her mother’s recipe books looked like.

“I thought about my mother who had taught herself to make pastries during the Great Depression to help herself financially and so much so that she went on to decorate cakes,” Sinclaire said.

“She used to take all her recipes and glue them into recipe books and when she found something she liked better, and she didn’t want the other one anymore, another recipe would become glued on top of it.”

Sinclaire replicated a section of her mother’s recipe book to go along with the painting.

Sinclaire and Whittaker’s work, along with many other community artists’, will be on display at The Art Gallery Osoyoos, 8713 Main Street, from Jan. 12 to Feb. 2.

An opening reception will take place on Jan. 12 form 12 to 2 p.m.