The new John V. Hicks Gallery exhibit in the Margo Fournier Arts Centre celebrates art created in the building.
Randi Lalonde had an opening reception Friday afternoon for Space to Surface, her first solo exhibit at the Margo Fournier.
“The work in this exhibit in general is mostly created in the studio space at the Art Centre, so there’s kind of a tie with the space it was created in and where it’s being shown,” Lalonde explained.
Lalonde crated many of the pieces during George Glenn’s workshops at the Arts Centre studio space.
Lalonde, who is based out of the Tisdale area, has been a working artist for nearly 20 years. In 2007, she got serious about it, and began taking university classes and more formal education.
She said the pieces themselves have a feeling of space because of the colour palette.
“I have done a lot of plein-air painting in the landscape,” she explained. “That’s quite a bit of my work. It is similar in that you do take a lot of time to really look at something and you’re just trying to capture the essence of it.
“It’s kind of like trying to be present in the moment and working back and forth with what’s in front of you and what you’re putting down on your paper or canvas,” she added.
The light field in the studio space also helps to inspire her work.
“It’s what really draws me,” she said. “I’m always trying to find the light and that’s, I think, what lends itself to the palette.”
This is Lalonde’s first solo show at the Hicks Gallery but she did have a solo show last year at the library in Nipawin. Having the show in the same space where the art was created is significant to Lalonde.
“It’s a beautiful space,” she said. “It’s historical and light-filled, and it’s just, really, a place that almost feels like coming home.”
She said the work of Price Albert painter George Glenn, who was in attendance at the opening, was a significant influence on the show.
The title of the show Space to Surface came from a conversation with Mann Art Gallery Interim Artistic Director Jesse Campbell, who curated the exhibition.
“This beautiful space that we were able to create in, that kind of lent itself to the pieces,” Lalonde explained. “(It’s) space, and then the surface because I was experimenting with tar gel in George’s workshop and different things on the surface of the work.”
Campbell said that the idea of surface and space are connected.
“As a surface, it becomes a new sort of space. As the marks are made, there’s a certain expansiveness even though it’s contained within a surface,” Campbell said.
The opening included a discussion of each piece between Campbell and Lalonde that guests were invited to participate in.
“I think it’s so appropriate because so much of it comes from this this space and from the Hicks Gallery itself,” Lalonde said. “I love this sense of expansiveness with how the echoes of the window and the light that comes through the window are present in the pieces.”
Space to Surface is in the John V. Hicks Art Gallery in the Margo Fournier Arts Centre from Nov. 1 to Nov. 23.
