Colleen Dyson
Landscapes are a popular subject for local artists, especially in the scenic Okanagan. But they rarely contain people.
Kelowna artist Colleen Dyson, whose solo exhibition opens Saturday at the Osoyoos Art Gallery, is different.
The show is titled Transitions in Light and Colour: My Journey.
“I’m fairly new at landscape and now I’m starting to put people into them,” said Dyson. “It’s really getting exciting.”
Dyson has only been doing landscapes for about five years, but her portfolio contains a stunning selection of mountain scenes, moored boats, rivers and old farmhouses.
Noteworthy are her paintings of ramshackle Costa Rican village streets, some containing people as part of the landscape.
Dyson started painting more than 20 years ago and for the first five years she painted watercolours, winning awards for her colourful work. Her early work was mostly florals and still life.
She originally started painting because she thought it would relax her and stop her serious migraines.
Unfortunately, the migraines continued, but fortunately, so did her painting.
She then took up acrylics, winning more awards.
About 10 years ago, she discovered oils and hasn’t looked back. Oils now are her medium of choice.
“I do acrylics occasionally,” she said. “I dabble with them, but my serious work is all oils.”
Oils, she said, blend better than acrylics.
“It’s like painting with butter,” she said. “Whereas with acrylics it’s like painting with liquid plastic. The only advantage really to acrylics is that they dry faster.”
Her exhibition in Osoyoos won’t contain any watercolours or still lifes, she said. And she only plans to show one acrylic painting.
Another unusual feature of her recent work is the use of a black canvas as her starting point, adding drama to the paintings as she draws the colours out of the blacks.
“Nobody paints a black canvas,” she said. “They always tell you white, white, white. I paint my canvas black to begin with. If you think of black as containing all the colours, what I’m doing then is bringing the image out of the black. The black becomes my darkest shadow colours and adds drama, because I’m all about light and colour. It exaggerates light.”
Her Costa Rica paintings are based on about six months in total that she’s spent in that Central American country visiting with her sister.
Some are of scenes at Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean, where the culture and ethnicity are more Afro-Caribbean than the rest of this Latin American country.
But one of her most impressive paintings in this series, titled “Going Home,” was taken in a little town on the way, but off the tourist route, where a taxi driver drove them around.
“I was able to snap about 1,000 pictures,” she said. “That’s where those street scenes came from.”
Going Home shows an Afro-Caribbean man walking down a street past ramshackle homes, with puddles on the ground suggesting a recent rainfall.
Dyson said her impression is that although the people of the area don’t have the material possessions that North Americans do, they are happy nonetheless.
“It’s been two years since I was there, but when I look at one of the paintings, it’s like I’m there,” she said. “It’s all about the people and how I sense this about them, which is why I started putting the people in so that I could bring that out.”
Transitions in Light and Colour: My Journey runs from April 2 to 23 at Osoyoos Art Gallery, 8713 Main Street. The opening reception is Saturday, April 2 from 3 to 5 p.m.
The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from noon to 4 p.m.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
Colleen Dyson’s painting “Going Home” is based on one of many photos she took in an untouristy town her taxi driver stopped in on the way to somewhere else. (Colleen Dyson, painter)
