A coin is a perfect object with two vastly different sides. Like the coin, the Visual Arts Studio Association’s (VASA) current exhibition unites two separate entities into one cohesive matter.
The current exhibition running until April 26 takes inspiration from two artists’ different visions. While Sandra Elsinga’s Grandeur of Creation restricts her realistic, nature-based paintings to simple colour palettes, Elliot Rose’s Born a Butterfly abstracts are personal explorations that take on bold, flamboyant complexions.
Sandra Elsinga
Grandeur of Creation
Born in the Netherlands, Elsinga immigrated to Canada as a nine-year-old and settled in Ontario. By Grade 3 she displayed above-average hand-eye coordination and was singled out by a teacher.
By Grade 7, she was taking art through correspondence courses and in Grade 9, her high school teacher was Robert Bateman, one of Canada’s most renowned naturalists and painter.
“That was before he was famous. I didn’t know who he was. He just liked the environmental stuff, and I did too,” said Elsinga.
Shortly after high school, she worked in a key punch position at International Harvester before marrying and moving west with her husband. The couple grew their family, raising five children, and painting was set aside.
After Elsinga’s husband John took early retirement, the duo started a second career volunteering on disaster relief programs through their Christian church. She took photos and subsequently kept them as references for paintings
“We started just before Katrina and we were in New Orleans. We’ve been to every state except Alaska. It was the best second career we could have. We met so many wonderful people,” Elsinga said.
In the last five years, volunteering slowed down, allowing Elsinga to pick up a brush and paint from the many photographs she captured while travelling. At the gallery we see locations she visited — the Grand Canyon, a tulip field in Washington, a snow-covered big-sky field at Rimbey or early morning light in the mountains.
Using her natural talent and only seven paint colours, Elsinga explores the numerous possibilities of nature.
“It’s an honour to do this. Rather than staying in my cupboard, others can share them.”
Elliot Rose
Born a Butterfly
The Edmonton visual artist had difficulty finding purpose in life. He was an athlete on track to join the Ontario Hockey League. But in Grade 12 he developed HSP, a vascular disease that inflames blood vessels. It put an end to a promising hockey career.
He drifted from job to job until reading Roger Fry’s Cézanne, a Study of His Development.
“The way he (Cézanne) spoke to me was incredibly strong and very insightful,” said Rose.
Although Fry’s book is short, it proved to be a divine revelation for Rose who set out to purify his practice by focusing on shapes and creating a rhythmic flow.
“The movement and rhythm happening on the painting activates my soul and imagination. I don’t plan things. I allow them to come to the surface. I trust my soul to speak and allow my hand to dance. And when I dance, I am unencumbered as a child,” Rose said.
He believes young children’s art to be the purest form and patterns his paintings with a similar enthusiastic curiosity — one that occasionally steps outside the lines and defies convention.
Through his art, Rose searches for Cézanne’s concept of the divine by seeking the essence of shapes and arranging them so their spatial relationships create an aesthetic emotion.
“So, they come alive to stir the spirit and the soul.”
VASA is at 25 Sir Winston Churchill Avenue.
