The Main Gallery will turn into a Fine Arts Shop: an intentionally curated art sale, from December 3 – 22, 2020.
The Shop features thoughtfully selected, high quality fine art by professional and emerging artists from across Vancouver Island. The selection committee is excited to offer locals this truly unique opportunity to shop for professional art, raise funds for the Gallery’s public programs, and support living artists.
Splurge on a new piece for your mantle, bring a client, or just come enjoy this exclusive experience.
Please be mindful of our Covid-19 safety protocols when visiting. These include self-screening for symptoms, hand sanitizing, physical distancing, mandatory masks, and occupancy limits. Please limit your group size to 6 people, and we encourage you to visit with members of your immediate household only.
Holiday Hours
Monday, December 21, 10am to 5pm
Tuesday, December 22, 10am – 5pm
Wednesday, December 23, 12pm to 5pm
The Gallery will be closed December 24 to January 1. Happy Holidays!
Private Shopping available by appointment.
Featured Artists
Justice Schanfarber
I make large and small paintings that sometimes include collage and assemblage. My work could be reasonably categorized as abstract contemporary.
The purpose of my art practice is to engage with aesthetic forces that I do not understand. My relationship with these forces deepens over time and proximity, and also through the successful completion of work; hence my commitment to the practice of art making.
Working with unintended consequences is a crucial part of my practice. I take risks in materials and process, making mistakes and then working with the mistakes. In this way mistakes are refined and redefined, becoming synchronicities and blessings.
The drama and intrigue in my work can be applied to the issues of the day, seen through the lens of the issues of the day, without wholly submitting to the issues of the day. A flexibility of meaning is retained and the audience remains free to engage with the work on their own terms.
Scott Bertram
Scott Bertram is an abstract painter based in the Comox Valley. He has a BFA from the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna, BC and an MFA from NSCAD University in Halifax, NS. He was a semi-finalist in the 12th RBC Canadian Painting Competition and has received many other awards including funding from the BC Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. His paintings have been shown in solo and group exhibitions across Canada as well as in the USA, Australia, Germany, Mexico, and the UK. Scott currently teaches drawing and painting at North Island College and has a large solo show upcoming at the Vernon Public Art Gallery in Vernon, BC.
Shelley Vanderbyl
Shelley Vanderbyl’s work first comes across as a painting practice. Her oil paintings and frescoes have been in group and solo exhibitions across Canada and Europe. In 2016, the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada honoured Vanderbyl by presenting one of her frescoes to His Royal Highness Prince Edward. For her, it’s a relational art practice, about setting up circumstances that paintings exist in. Gifting objects, telling stories, creating backdrops and installations allow her to speak messages of hope, and to explore diverse ways of providing a kind of visual therapy. Hospitals have purchased her medicine tins to benefit staff and patients, including the New Karolinska Solna, in Sweden. In 2018 she received a grant from the Winnipeg Arts Council to travel to Sweden, at the invitation of All Art Now and Kultivera, to attend a residency, exhibit, and speak, in Tranas and Stockholm. Her work is in public, corporate and private collections across Canada, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, Poland, Belgium, South Africa, and Switzerland.
Shelley is particularly interested in aiding people who are experiencing mental hardships, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; she asks with her work, “If what someone has seen can leave them broken, can an image be a part of their healing?”
Eiko Jones
While growing up in New Zealand, Eiko acquired his first SLR camera at the age of fourteen. He quickly discovered his passion for capturing images of animals, especially birds, in their natural habitat. During extensive trips along the West Coast of British Columbia and Alaska in the early 1990’s, his focus shifted to coastal landscapes above and below the waterline.
Whether exploring the ocean or alternate bodies of water, such as marshes and rivers, Eiko has developed a dramatic style in which he celebrates the corners of our world which are seldom seen. He captures the surreal through constant awareness of lighting and unique angles. He has won awards in both film and photography and has been published in numerous international magazines, including National Geographic, British Columbia Magazine, Diver, Sport Diver, Daily Mail, People! Submerge, Ducks Unlimited, and Orion to name a few. His Fine Art Photography has also been sold around the world.
Eiko is making a shift more into film making now, having recently completed two films featuring salmon. One, Heartbeat of the River, has won numerous awards and been selected to multiple film festivals. This film features mostly underwater cinematography of salmon in their natural realm.
While a big part of his work focuses on Salmon and local watershed issues, other underwater and topside subjects round out his collection. Eiko is a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society and is a member of the Ocean Artists Society.
Troy Moth
Troy Moth is an artist from Tahsis, British Columbia. Generations of Moth’s family logged Vancouver Island’s coastal forests. Working primarily with salvaged wood that has been discarded in logging cut blocks, his work attempts to confront his family history and transform his relationship to nature and wood.
Moth reveals the sculpture of nature and asks us what we value and what we discard, what we commodify and covet. His evocative sculptures acknowledge the truth of shape and challenge our perceptions. A cut block, already containing unrefined forms used by Giacometti or Noguichi, is full of art. His work asks, how do we judge what is worthy or worthless?
Martha James
My porcelain sculpture is an exploration of the qualities of surface and
form. I create my compositions with a focus on texture, smooth, rough, and
delicate. My pieces are interpretations of classical forms such as chalices,
vessels, scrolls, and plaques. Pieces are sprayed with various ashes and
some areas have been coloured with oxides under the ashes to enhance
the textures.
With my husband, Gordon James, we established James Pottery in 1976.
Our studio and gallery allow me to work and display the functional and
sculptural ceramics, drawings, and photographs that I create.
I have exhibited my work nationally and internationally.
Gordon James
Gordon James has worked full time as a potter, painter, sculptor and
printmaker since 1976. Prior to starting his art practice he studied at the
Alberta College of Art. Gordon has also studied art history in Florence, Italy,
Museum and Art Gallery Administration at The University of Victoria, and
printmaking at North Island College, Courtenay, BC.
Gordon and his wife Martha have operated James Pottery on Quadra
Island, British Columbia, Canada for 44 years. He has exhibited his work
nationally and internationally.
Darren Larose
Darren Larose resides in Campbell River, BC. He is a painter who uses oil, acrylic and a variety of other mediums. Darren’s upbringing was shaped by the military, his father and religion, his mother. He received a diploma form the Ottawa School of Art and a degree from the University of Victoria in Visual Arts. He is grateful for the great mentors in his life, both from academia and the art community who helped establish him.
Darren plays with atmosphere, perspective, shapes, and color. His paintings are charged with purposeful compositions. He reduces detail to allow the imagination to take over. He paints bold flat shapes, like cookie cutters, to express something missing, something void. Darren often neglects a predetermined outcome when creating his works. One mark leads to another capturing the essence of the process.
Katie Brennan
Katie Brennan holds an MFA from the University of Guelph and a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art & Design. Her work has been shown in exhibitions in Canada and the United States. Her work has been offered at major retailers across Canada & the US including Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma Home, and appeared in interior design work in Domino Magazine, House & Home and Better Homes & Gardens, among others. She has also completed a number of public art projects, and was awarded artist residencies at the Banff Centre, the Caetani Cultural Centre, and UBC Okanagan. During her time as the Curator for the Lake Country Art Gallery, BC and as the Executive Director of the Arts Council of the Central Okanagan, BC, she also led a number of self-generated entrepreneurial projects, including Katie Brennan Art Consulting which she continues today. Brennan has also held administrative and/or curatorial positions at many public galleries such as the Vancouver Art Gallery. Her writing has appeared in Border Crossings and Galleries West magazines, as well as in many exhibition catalogues. She is currently living and working in Comox, BC on Vancouver Island on the traditional unceded territory of the K’omoks First Nation.
Liz Carter
Originally from Alert Bay, Liz currently resides with her family in Campbell River. She has received numerous awards including the VADA, (visual arts development award) A First Peoples, Heritage, Language and Cultural Award, BC Arts Council Award, a work purchased by the Canadian Art Bank in Ottawa, a commission Awarded for a permanent piece for the 2010 Olympics. Recently Liz received the ‘The Idea Award ‘ from Emily Carr University where her work was purchased by the Vancouver General Hospital and she was also honoured to receive the Reveal Award from the Hnatyshyn Foundation.
Bob McLeod & Shannon Proctor-McLeod
Bob started learning about glass in 2004, and has been playing ever since.
Bob has been to Red Deer College’s Summer School for the Arts twice, once on a British Columbia Glass Artist’s Association scholarship.
Shannon started playing with glass around 2006. Before that, she had attended art schools in Victoria and Vancouver.
Along the way we have had the privilege of working with several different glass artists, and have learned much from each of them.
Working out of our own studio, Fiasco Glass, we revel in the immediacy of glass: once you start a piece, you have to finish it. There is no stopping for tea, or throwing a damp towel over it to resume another day. It needs doing now. A stray drop of sweat, an errant breeze, a moments inattention while reheating can lead to disastrous results, or floor models, as we call them.
The wall hangings really came together when Shannon became intrigued by the problem of hanging such delicate pieces. Through trial and error, we came up with the system we have now. While Bob makes the individual components, it is her eye and imagination that completes each wall hanging, as she spends hours working on the arrangements and engineering easy reassembly. The wall hangings truly are a collaborative effort.
Sarmad Al Mouallem
Sarmad AlMouallem was born in Damascus, Syria. He graduated from Damascus University with a degree in electrical engineering and a major in renewable energy. A dear friend Marwan played an instrumental role in pushing him to get a camera and pursue his true passion for photography. The lens incited Sarmad’s passion for travel. The camera allows a sometimes shy and careful observer to record the complexity of life around him. Street photography allows for captured moments to be recorded and shared. Using a camera in public in Syria brings unwanted political attention thus making the practice of the art difficult and sometimes dangerous. Life in the country changed dramatically in 2011 with the onset of war making Sarmad’s passions for photography and travel nearly impossible to pursue. This marked the beginning of a journey that would eventually lead to a new life in Canada. He is constantly learning and trying new techniques and equipment from his base in Campbell River, BC where he runs Photo Tech/ Foto Source.
Corrine Hunt
“I want to show how both the First Nations people and the art have evolved,” she explains. In that process, she is continually inventing and reinventing stories from her culture, honouring her roots and cultivating a refreshing artistic expression at the same time.
The results are extraordinary pieces that are both ageless and contemporary.
The engravings are not overly ornate; like poetry, they convey their message using as few lines as possible.
Similarly, the custom furnishings combine materials that speak to old and new, and bring the concept of living culture into contemporary homes.