By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
A recent addition to the Okanagan Art Gallery this past summer is Beverly Waters, a self-taught abstract artist based in Penticton, who is rapidly developing attention for her deeply layered abstracts and collages.
In conversation with the Times Chronicle, Waters relates that she has been making art her entire life, “but like most budding artists, I was encouraged by my parents to do something else,” she laughs.
Following that advice, she entered the corporate world and life ticked along until a catastrophic back injury in 2013 saw her undergoing spinal cord surgery, hospitalizing her for many months.
“I became quite depressed, but turned towards my art as rehabilitation and therapy,” she says, adding that while she couldn’t do a lot of things, she could still paint.
Waters then got quite serious about her art, in part because she found it was very good for her mental health, but also because she (re)discovered she had a talent for it.
“It just brought me so much joy that I really got serious about it and started taking more and more courses, and then people started approaching me to buy my work, and it just kind of organically grew from there,” she says.
Her art is about processing emotions and her journey through life, she says. “It’s a visual diary, which, you know, is cliche,” she chuckles. “Many people say that, but for me, it really is. I’ll see something, or I’ll feel something, and immediately I’ll get an idea for a painting, but it’s not a concrete idea.”
Instead, it’s a “feeling, it’s a little spark of creativity,” she explains. When she begins her work, there is no plan, typically just a colour palette that guides her. “It all starts with play, and nothing is serious at the beginning. It’s just mark making and playing and just exploring my materials, colours and tools.”
Her paintings usually consist of between 10 and 30 layers, and on these she marks with her tools. She explains: “It becomes kind of a call and response, and editing. And then once I’ve got my basic idea down, I let my creativity flow, then I start making edits and perfecting things and paying attention to design and composition, and the general balance and harmony of the pieces, of pleasing aesthetically.”
Waters works in mixed media, with acrylic, oil, pastels, crayons, and charcoal all finding a home on her canvas. She also does a lot of collage, incorporating items that are meaningful to her. This is a popular aspect for commission work, in which people have personal items that she then incorporates into her abstract painting.
She gives the example of a piece she created for a couple who like to travel. Old passports, boarding passes, menus from restaurants, ticket stubs from museums and so on. “I put that into the painting and then create other work around it,” she explains, adding that generally she doesn’t use the original items, but copies instead.
Up to 30 per cent of her art sales are commissions, which she notes is “pretty good”. And aside from the financial aspect, Waters says it can be very rewarding artistically. “When someone tells you what their dream is, you take them the painting, they unwrap it, and they start to cry – It’s a really amazing feeling.”
Now calling Penticton home (previously Alberta) for nearly a year, overlooking Okanagan Lake has and continues to hold her artistic attention with a burgeoning collection of water-themed paintings. “So I’m definitely very heavily influenced by my environment,” she adds.
When asked how she feels about painting her emotions out on a canvas that may end up on someone else’s wall with a completely different emotional connection, she says, “That is the beauty of abstract – it leaves the possibility of interpretation to the viewer.”
She notes that one painting can elicit feelings of immense joy from one person while the next might feel heart-aching sorrow.
Gesturing to one of her paintings, “Cherish This Day”, she said it’s a very “feminine painting,” which a lot of women connect with. “It’s so ethereal, and there are so many layers on that painting.” This is why, she says, abstract art requires spending time with it.
“It’s not something we just walk by and go, ‘oh wow, that’s okay’. You actually have to go and look at it.”
It also means it has a certain longevity in the sense that it’s always open to further interpretation. An apple orchard will always be an apple orchard, but with perhaps different shades, she says, laughing that “a rooster is always going to be a rooster.”
This open-ended interpretation is one reason Waters seldom signs the front of her paintings. “Some paintings have an orientation that they’re set to hang, but a lot of them, because of the beauty of abstract, if you get tired of the painting this way, you don’t like it, turn it around,” she says.
“People who collect abstract paintings will change the orientation, but once you sign it, then the collector is stuck; they can only hang it one way.”
Waters’ works have been shown in exhibitions in BC and Alberta, including the CASA Art Gallery, the Allied Arts Council, Crowsnest Pass Art Gallery, the Penticton Art Gallery, and the Long Gallery, Penticton.
But it is the new home for her art that she is most pleased about, and that was being accepted into the Okanagan Art Gallery in Osoyoos, which admits new artists through a jury process.
“I love it because it’s co-op. It’s just such a nice vibe, you know. It’s a family, we’re all supporting each other and we’re not supporting a business person where everything’s going back into the gallery,” she says.
“So this has been, for me, a great experience. It’s just such a diverse group of people, and they’re also welcoming,” she says, adding that it was another abstract artist, Jenny Lewis, who is featured at the gallery, who introduced her to the OAG.
The Okanagan Art Gallery is located at 8302 Main St. in Osoyoos, 778-437-2238.
