One of St. Albert’s longstanding members of the Visual Arts Studio Association community is about to get his big début in one of Edmonton’s newest and freshest galleries.

Miles Constable – the painter who last demonstrated the time-held tradition of tracing his hands to produce a piece for a palm tree themed show at the Studio Gallery – has finally got a solo show to reckon with, starting next week at the Daffodil Gallery on 124 Street in Edmonton.

The show is called Winter to Spring to Summer and arrives just in time for autumn. Constable says his favourite time of year is spring, no matter whether he’s being asked the question from a personal or artistic standpoint.

“I don’t think it is different,” he commented. “Spring is so interesting because you get this renewal, this life, this new light and energy after the winter.”

“It’s always that transition from an old, draggy, tired down winter feeling to spring which is just a whole new rejuvenation which I guess is the cliché for spring but it really is (true).”

He described how this show originally sprang out of a series of paintings called Rise Up that he did last fall with a “lot of yellows and greens and reds.” From there, his work took a diversion.

“I went back to the previous series that I was doing which was a lot of abstracted urban landscapes. I painted that from the fall into February. I noticed as a general trend they were getting darker and more brooding as winter went on,” he said.

He was thankful for what he called some glorious early spring days that led him to start a new series called Blue and Yellow.

“With a ‘lightness of being’ I moved into a new series using blue, yellow and white with emphasis on movement. These fun pieces are light, energetic and full of movement, some are related to landscape and some are almost aquatic,” he explains in the artist’s statement that accompanies the show.

They express happiness too, he says.

“I got through the winter just fine and I painted that series on into the summer. As they went along, they got brighter and with more action and I painted bigger. I was quite happy with how they turned out,” he said.

Audiences can certainly expect a good dose of bright colours from this new exhibit, with more than a dozen of the works from the first two series plus several others from this new, lively and vivacious spring series.

This marks Constable’s breakthrough showcase to broaden his audience into Edmonton. Although he’s been represented with other works at the Daffodil for almost a year now, this solo exhibit is expected to launch him into a huge new market. He said he’s ready for the expansion.

“There’s only so many people in St. Albert who are going to be interested in art, even pure and abstract art, so accessing the market for metropolitan Edmonton is truly exciting,” he said.

He added that the gallery also has a lot of other local representation, including some from the same artists’ association. This includes Bruce Allen, Doris Charest, Rick Rogers, Judy Leila Schafers, Pat Wagensveld, Linda Willard and Samantha Williams-Chapelsky.

Comments

NOTE: To post a comment in the new commenting system you must have an account with at least one of the following services: Disqus, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, OpenID. You may then login using your account credentials for that service. If you do not already have an account you may register a new profile with Disqus by first clicking the "Post as" button and then the link: "Don't have one? Register a new profile".

The St. Albert Gazette welcomes your opinions and comments. We do not allow personal attacks, offensive language or unsubstantiated allegations. We reserve the right to delete comments deemed inappropriate. We reserve the right to close the comments thread for stories that are deemed especially sensitive. For further information, please contact the editor or publisher.