By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
“Osoyoos Evening Glow” by local artist Pam Duncan has been chosen as the Osoyoos Art Gallery’s 2023 Poster Contest winner.
The annual poster contest was kicked off last year as a way of both highlighting the substantial artistic talent in the community as well as raise money for the non-profit gallery.
As with last year’s winning artwork by Osoyoos Secondary School student Prabnoor Samra, Duncan’s piece will be photographed by local photographer Richard McGuire and printed in a limited run of 100 posters. These will all be signed by the artist and available for sale.
Osoyoos Art Gallery curator, Claudia Punter said jurors from Penticton scrutinized the submitted artwork which had all identifying marks of each artist, such as signatures or labels, covered.
Punter said the first reaction from the judges after looking over the artwork was: “Wow that’s hard!” because of the quality of the artwork they had to choose from. This year included acrylics, oil, photography and a quilt.
Second place went to Sandra Albo, third to Greg Reely for his Spotted Lake photo and fourth to Claudia Punter.
Don Urquhart photo
“I just want to say thank you and how grateful I am for the recognition of this painting,” said Duncan. “I’m also humbled because looking at the artwork around this gallery, it’s quite humbling.”
“There’s a lot of talent in our community and I think this is just such a great way to celebrate our community, it’s very special,” she added.
Punter noted that there are now four gallery spaces in Osoyoos, with the addition of Wayside Books and Art which has a “gallery wall.” This is in addition to the Osoyoos Art Gallery, the Okanagan Art Gallery and also JoJo’s Cafe.
Mayor Sue McKortoff, who was on hand to present a $500 cheque to Dunn, said: “We have a really interesting and talented group of artists in this community.”
Explaining the inspiration behind her painting, Duncan said she enjoys going down to sẁiẁs park (formerly referred to as Haynes Point). It was one of those walks in the summertime when the clouds were breaking a bit and lit up by the setting sun, that fired her creative impulse.
“I wanted to challenge myself with a nocturnal painting, to try and bring out the colour of the sunset, but also the shadows as evening was approaching. I love the shadows in the hills.”
The viewpoint is from sẁiẁs looking north “and the lights are just starting to come on in town. It’s kind of a magical time,” she said.
A unique aspect of the painting, but by no means rare in the artistic world, is the fact it’s a square painting. “I’m really liking painting in a square format, it’s just so different of a way of capturing the image instead of the rectangular shape.”
But she said despite painting in the square format for nearly two years it can be challenging because we are all accustomed to a rectangular 4×3-type ratio. “I think historically paintings have typically been done in that way.”
And indeed a quick bit of internet research indicates that when paintings shifted from wood to canvas the rectangular shape was the easiest shape to stretch the canvas over the wooden frame.
“The square format also challenges me,” she said explaining that “you’ve got to be conscious of where the centre point is and to try and work around it not bringing attention to the centre.
She still paints rectangular formats, “it just depends on the subject,” she said.
For the poster reproduction this also meant a slight adaptation. The Osoyoos 2023 will be vertical on the right-hand side this year, rather than horizontally underneath the image as it was last year.
A poster signing will be held on Saturday, Jan. 14 and available for purchase at $30 each. Aside from the works of art that competed for the top honour, the second room of the gallery also features additional works by the same artists. The show is on until Jan. 28 and the gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
