New kid on the VASA block opens April show with Renaissance women

Amedeo Modigliani has been gone for almost a century, but his art lives on, thanks to the tribute paid to him courtesy of one of the city’s newest artists.

Kristine McGuinty has only just moved to St. Albert, but is already making strides at establishing her name and her paintings. She’s making all the right moves too, joining VASA (the Visual Arts Studio Association), getting on the organization’s board and now she has her first show opening this week.

“I’d heard from lots of people that St. Albert is a very artistic community… it’s got lots of culture and art,” she said when discussing her expectations of the move. “That was a bonus feature of selling St. Albert.”

My Renaissance Madonnas is her homage to not only the modern Italian master of elongated faces but it’s also her attempt to pay tribute to women as peaceful, wise and ageless beings.

“Within these qualities are those feminine powers of survival that demonstrate inner strength,” she writes in her artist statement. “I am personally drawn to art that has a narrative quality and my aim is to portray this in my paintings, mixed mediums and altered books.”

Formerly of Peace River, McGuinty has been working to develop a keen eye for figure as much for ground. When she began a career in forestry, she found herself taking her camera around with her as another way of learning about and expressing her enjoyment of her natural surroundings. As life went on and her family started to grow, she left one path to pick up another.

“I did lots of landscape stuff, then when I had my babies, my camera turned to the children,” she explained. “Then I started a photography business for 21 years. Then I started doing art from the photography.”

The focus of this show is her female Modigliani-esque figures with their pristine gazes, classical poses and weirdly tilted necks, but viewers will get a good sampling of everything else that she has to offer.

McGuinty admitted that she also has a fondness for Botticelli, whose faces of Venus, she concedes, will be seen in her works. She says that she is not new to her love of Renaissance art.

“It’s been percolating for 13 years now. That’s how long I’ve been growing my Renaissance Madonnas.”

As for the ‘peaceful, wise and ageless’ part, she has some theories that it’s more to do with what all humans want.

“I guess maybe that’s what we’re all searching for in life and I want that reflected in them, so that it helps me reflect that in my own life.”