Press Release: Joy Laking’s 2010 Open House Exhibition
Dates: Oct 16,17 & 23, 24
Time: 10 am to 5 pm
Place: Joy Laking Gallery
6730 Hwy. #2, Bass River, N. S.
Website: www.joylakinggallery.com
Phone: 902 647 2816 or 1 800 565 5899
Email: joy@joylakinggallery.com
For more than twenty-two years, Joy Laking’s gallery, near Bass River,
has featured her distinctive
watercolours of Nova Scotia’s beauty.
Her 2010 Open House Exhibition is Oct 16, 17, 23 and 24 and although
some new watercolours are still on display, the theme of this exhibition is Joy’s leap into doing oils and acrylics. In the studio last winter, Joy went off in several
directions, doing big juicy loose oil stick canvases as well as small
controlled acrylics. Often the
small canvases served as studies for larger works. One of the books that Joy was reading at the time, a novel
called Sunflowers, about Van Gogh, led to Joy’s series
of Starry Night paintings.
In the spring, Joy and her husband, Jim Wyatt, set off in the car for the Yukon and Alaska. Camping across the country, gave Joy a renewed appreciation for our wonderful country. Joy took hundreds of photos and did small sketches and quarter sheet watercolours. Repeatedly she tried to capture the amazing grandeur of mountains with paint. None of
Joy’s on- location paintings managed to capture the gasp of mountain beauty to her satisfaction.
Since
returning from this two month adventure, Joy has continued to try to capture
the Yukon mountain beautyin her studio paintings. She feels that she
succeeds in one new acrylic, called Kluane. This painting is moody and dark
with the sunlight breaking through clouds over the mountains. A strip of light sparkles on Kluane
Lake in the foreground. This
painting is displayed at the Open House with 7 of the small sketches that Joy
did on-location. Some of these
sketches, especially of the totem poles, are sure to inspire some of this
winter’s work.
Most of this summer, Joy has been standing out in fields, villages or on the shoreline trying to capture the light, colour and beauty of Nova Scotia in acrylic painting. Acrylic painting done on location has lots of challenges, such as the sun drying the paint on the palette.
It has also resulted in
lots of clothes with paint on them.
Although Joy usually paints close to her home, sometimes even just
walking down onto the salt marsh, she also travels to other spots around Nova
Scotia for one week painting trips.
This year was especially interesting because Joy returned to the two
places that she painted in watercolour in 2009. This year’s acrylic paintings done in the Port Joli area
and also on Long Island, one of the Five Islands, are vibrant and strong. The eight paintings done during each of
the weeks are displayed together for the Open House.
Laking’s Open House Exhibition is October 16, 17, 23
& 24. In addition to viewing
all of her new paintings, there are four new prints and a selection of new
paintings on greeting cards.
Everyone is welcome. There
is more information at www.joylakinggallery.com.
Respectfully submitted
Joy Snihur Wyatt Laking