The Colborne Art Gallery is pleased to present All Things Bright and Beautiful, our annual Christmas Show and Sale.

This show celebrates the oncoming winter season and the festive atmosphere that it generates. Gallery artists will be exhibiting and selling art work of all sizes and price ranges... everything from cards and ornaments to art for your walls. Perfect gifts for the art lovers amongst us.

As a special fundraiser this year, small 5” x 7” canvasses have been transformed by gallery artists into one-of-a-kind artworks. These will be available for sale on the day of the opening. All proceeds will go towards the gallery.

Please join us in welcoming the festive season ahead. During the opening reception enjoy hot cider and an assortment of mouthwatering treats while visiting with the artists, experiencing the creations exhibited…and perhaps completing some Christmas shopping.

Also see "Snowshine", jewellery by Monika Becker Devine on display in the Heritage Room..

All Things Bright and Beautiful opens Saturday November 19, 2011 with an opening reception from 12-4 pm, and runs until November 23, 2011.

Gallery Hours are Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5 pm.

Please join us at our opening and also enjoy a selection of new works by members of The Colborne Art Gallery.

Openings - a series of textile works by Veronica Derry which invite the viewer within. Through a subtle physical opening, the viewer finds focus beyond the first visual impression, allowing an opening up of thought, conversation, and curiosity.

Also see The Many Faces of a Portrait, works by Gallery artists Jillian Roos Markowitz and Judith Kreps Hawkins, on display in the Heritage Room.

Openings opens Saturday October 8, 2011 with an opening reception from 2-4 pm, and runs until November 13th, 2011.

The Colborne Art Gallery is pleased to present Diverse Inventions, an exhibition
of new work by Gallery artist Irene Osborne.

"The dictionary defines the word "inventions" in several ways, but I use it here with the meaning "originated by experiment or original devising". There is generally the expectation that paintings by an artist are consistent in style and readily identifiable. For me that is generally not the case. I am constantly inventing and changing.

When I take a first look at the fresh canvas I am at first paralyzed by its pure whiteness. Will it ever be as fresh and full of light after it is painted? What will it become? So much potential, how to begin?

Music is my most effective muse, followed by altered memories from the landscape. So a CD or 103.1 FM on the radio finds its place in the studio and jars of paint on the shelf call me to play. Once coloured marks have stained the intimidating surface the adventure of inventing begins. Sometimes I set a specific goal for the work. Even so, it may change because something more exciting has taken place. By intuition I will follow this new direction to explore it further. In doing so there are new discoveries to be found which were not predetermined at the beginning of the painting. It becomes an experiment, an adventure to see where this other path will lead.

The painting of music involves movement, rhythms, colour and mood to reflect the sound in a very personal way.

The painting of landscape involves memory, which is faulty at best, and reinventing a visual reality with an impression of the site."

- Irene Osborne, 2011

The Colborne Art Gallery is pleased to present Get a Life, an exhibition of new work by Gallery member artist Heather Roy.

Heather's abstract oil paintings explore the idea of painting from the "inside out"; from the human body's internal structure, to the process of externalizing deep spiritual impulses. Get a Life is an affirmation of the compelling energies arising from painting intuitively, trusting (as we do with life itself) that what will come, will be life-giving.

In addition to Heather's work in the main gallery, member artist Annie McDonald will be presenting Script in the Heritage room. Annie enjoys the arching shapes and proportion that contemporary graffiti takes on to reveal the limits of a standing reach: her works are 3D earthenware slab constructions decorated with glaze and beeswax encaustic.

Get a Life opens Saturday July 16th, 2011 with an opening reception from 2-4 pm, and runs until August 21st, 2011.

The Colborne Art Gallery is pleased to present "Women Who Wood II", a celebration of complicity with fire!  The show includes wood fired ceramic works by a group of women who have been addictively firing two cross-draft kilns together for the past 7 years: Celia Brandao, Shirley Clifford, Heather Daymond, Kim Harcourt, Monica Johnston, Carol-Ann Michaelson, Zsuzsa Monostory, Barbara Murphy, Marie Paquette, Terry Osborne, and Liz Willoughby. Please join these women at their opening and also enjoy a selection of new works by the members of The Colborne Art Gallery.

In “Crossroad”, a collection of Pat Stanley’s recent work, the artist uses two distinctly different perspectives to render aspects of her ongoing theme: the uneasy coexistence of the built environment with the natural world.

This exhibition includes pieces from "Intersection", her 2010 solo show at the Propeller Centre in Toronto, that present familiar symbols of our urban culture - concrete structures in Toronto’s landscape – transformed by future environmental impact into images in an album of an extinct civilization. The perspective is close-up and intimate, the structures vulnerable and tenuous, yet the viewer senses the presence of archetypal, monumental icons of a modern civilization in decline.

Her most recent work, begun in 2011, takes a giant step back – and up – from this intimate encounter, using vivid, aerial perspectives to further explore her ongoing theme. These high-altitude views of sprawling urbanscapes bring to mind Hubble telescope images of galaxies long-dead, but giving us the light – and life – of their past.

Read press coverage, April 25, 2011

Layers, a theme show by the members of the Colborne Art Gallery

Through lively discussion and collaboration, the members of The Colborne Art Gallery have chosen Layers as the theme for their annual group show. With several months to consider what the theme means to them and how it may best be explored in their own medium, the results are sure to be rich and varied.

Most art forms are developed in layers, with preliminary drawings, under paintings, glazes and finishes all contributing to the final surface. Sculptural forms and collages, ceramics and glasswork, the fine details of jewellery, all lend themselves to the layering process.

Subject and compositional layers, layers of meaning, of time, the earth and atmosphere, and of course, layers of the heart all provide a deep well of inspiration of this diverse group of artists.

In addition to the work of all 18 members on display in the three main gallery rooms, a related collection entitled cues and quietude will be displayed in the Heritage room. As an artist is continually responding to the world's sounds, symbols, tactile and visual experiences, this installation will give a glimpse into the process of two gallery artists, deborah uman sures and Barbara Buntin. Working with the Layers theme, the artists display some of the elements pictorial and/or written that serve to inspire, and the quiet reflection needed to find combinations that may lead to new artwork.

You’ll find a warm welcome and excellent work, professionally displayed in the Historic Colborne Registry building.

The Wall Series

Guest artist Eileen Menzel brings us mixed media paintings based on the significance of walls, some defensive, others protective, but ultimately all problem - solvers depending on their political, social and personal circumstances. Subject matter, in a variety of styles, ranges from Israeli security fences and war - time fronts to psychological barriers of indifference and denial.