Landscape paintings are always a favourite at the Osoyoos Art Gallery, but every so often, the gallery tries to shake things up with art that’s very different.
This may be the case when the gallery presents its next show, Beyond the Brush, featuring Oliver artist Susan McCarrell.
The show opens on Saturday, Aug. 29 with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m.
McCarrell’s style mixes abstract with realist images based on vintage photographs. At times you feel you’ve stepped back into a children’s book illustration of a century ago, but mixed with modern touches and fantasy.
“Landscapes are nice. Don’t get me wrong,” said Dianne Hughes, acting director, pointing to the Group of Seven-influenced show earlier this year by Osoyoos artist Peter Scott.
“But we want to change things up. So now we’re having Susan who is completely different and her technique is different.”
Although their styles are different, the gallery also stepped outside the box earlier this year with a show of portraits by young artist Carsten Coty-Scholl.
McCarrell said she’s mostly a self-taught artist, although she did study to become an art instructor in the 1980s at what was then called Capilano College in North Vancouver.
She also acquired a love for tinkering as a child in Winnipeg when her inventor father, who worked for Canadian National Railways, invited his six daughters to help him in his shop.
And her mother kept the girls busy with art projects.
Her career, however, took many twists and turns in very different directions before she was finally able to settle down as a full-time artist about seven years ago.
Instead of pursuing a career as an art instructor, McCarrell grabbed an opportunity in the 1980s to become a paralegal, a career she worked in for 15 years.
Then, in 1996, she and her husband decided to leave North Vancouver to live in a smaller community.
They ended up buying 34 acres on Black Sage Road, planting grapes, and running a winery from a Quonset hut.
“We worked there for about 13 years and owned Black Hills Estate Winery with another couple,” she said. “It was definitely a full-time, heads-down kind of thing. It kept me pretty busy.”
Only after they sold the winery was she able to really pursue her art, although when the winery was able to hire more people, she found some time to dabble.
Over the years, her style has evolved.
“I always admire contemporary abstracts,” said McCarrell. “I feel very strongly that that’s my passion, but when I put the pen and paint to the paper, I come out with my style. I don’t know why that is, but the style I’ve got I’m comfortable with.”
The show is called Beyond the Brush, however, because her work incorporates many elements beyond paint, including odds and ends she picks up and sets out on a long sill below the window of her studio.
“It’s not basically painting at all,” she said. “It’s more like construction and it’s more about building layers upon layers and textures and trying to build something out of nothing.”
McCarrell goes to flea markets and curiosity shops to gather old photos and other objects. She may digitally manipulate a photo, for example to pull one face out of a picture of a soccer team.
“With the printing, it gives you an open door to create a new story out of it, to let it make another run at history,” she said. “There are so many photographs that are just lost, forgotten, stuck in a cardboard box. It’s taking the time to use them and give them a bit of a rebirth.”
McCarrell’s show runs from Aug. 29 to Sept. 19 at Osoyoos Art Gallery, at 8713 Main Street.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
