There are so many pretty flowers at the McMullen Gallery one wonders where is the wonderful smell that should accompany them.
Three St. Albert artists — Sharon Moore-Foster, Allison Argy-Burgess and Dawn LeBlanc — have teamed up to put together this floral show that showcases the best of their watercolour, acrylic and electronic talents. Yes, electronic. LeBlanc, a versatile graphic artist who has spent the last few years branching into the world of digital photography, has discovered that using a powerful scanner can produce images of exquisite and intricate detail, all within a controlled environment.
This is her first major foray as an exhibiting artist. She explained that this stage of her creative career was born out of necessity and practicality.
“I started needing some photographs for some things that I was doing, like print work and that sort of thing. When all of these digital cameras started coming out and becoming quite accessible that made a big difference.”
For her portion of the show she didn’t just use cameras because scanners offer an environment with greater control and ease of acquisition. With the right subjects and the right settings, a beautiful print is just one button away.
“I had some pretty high demands from what I wanted so I kept moving up in terms of the quality of the cameras,” she said, referring to her interest in getting large-scale images. Several of her works here are 0.6 metres by 0.9 metres or more. Scanning still requires patience, she said. “[It can be] a lot of work. I’m always trying to do something a little different in terms of the presentation.”
The result comes across more as a simple study of different flowers with little else to offer. Yes, the flowers themselves are very pretty but I felt that there should have been more art and more interpretation involved. One work showed the back of a gerbera daisy, a simple turnaround that really exemplified how basic the art is here. I would have been much happier with more digital manipulation than these straightforward pictures.
I understand that the gallery exists to offer a place of quiet reflection for the hospital’s patients and it does that very well. This exhibit could have accomplished that and more though, especially considering the other talents involved. I like Foster’s expressive, organic and often ambiguous works that look so much like her sculptures that it’s uncanny. The work is good but doesn’t offer much in the way of challenges. Burgess’s ink and watercolour pieces have great forms and colours, too, but made me feel like I was standing in a pantry, not an art gallery.
As for LeBlanc, she said that she’s looking at trying hand tinting on silver-nitrate prints. She’s still a young artist and she is just blossoming. I can’t wait to be there when her work hits full bloom.
