In: painting

Mišo Smišek – Narrative Art
October 7, 2021

Mišo Smišek of Belgrade, Serbia, is a consummate artist. He paints and draws. He is an incredible photographer and has illustrated numerous books. He is a regularly published and acclaimed writer of short stories. He sculpts. He creates pottery and does frottage. The breadth and scope of his work is quite simply impressive. Best of all, every piece he creates has the ability to elicit deep emotion from the viewer or reader of his work. Often dark but rarely disheartening or depressing, his work typically incorporates two or more mediums as above. Mišo has uncanny an ability to create a short story in every piece of his work.

At 64 years old, Miso studied Slovak language and literature at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade and currently works as a librarian in Boľovce. He posts regularly to social media.

Facebook: Mišo Smišek Art
Instagram: @misosmisek

~ Mark Walton

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Down the Old Bog Road: Frances Crossan Blanchard
October 14, 2021

Our first Guest Curator Kim Fahner writes about the work of her friend Frances Blanchard. “When you stay in O’Neill Cottage, you see Frances sitting in front of you, but then can feel and sense a group of ancestors standing all around her, thanking her for bringing that homestead back to life. Her paintings, then, are full of details that conjure up stories of her family and the land they lived on.” Click for more!

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Sophie’s Choice – A Muse for Stephen
October 13, 2021

A muse, according to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, is a poet’s inspiring goddess or the source of inspiration for creativity. Fredericton painter Stephen Scott is not a poet, but he has found his muse and certainly an inspiration for creativity in his wife Sophie Thériault Scott. Stephen has known Sophie since 2000 and they have been married since 2010. She has been the subject of many of his paintings since that first meeting, but being his muse is far more than being a model for him to paint. Her presence in his life has affected all of his art. After all, that is what a muse is supposed to do.

Virgil Hammock offers some thoughts on the art of Stephen Scott in this article.

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Ana Žanić – One Breath
May 19, 2021

The first time you see Ana Žanić’s watercolor and pencil artwork is like taking a sharp blow to the limbic system. Every one of your senses screams “I know this” but cannot figure out what “this” is or why it knows it. They take on the form of something both organic and subliminal, communicating to us of the past (back to pre-history) and our deeply troubled emotional state we find ourselves in through the pandemic.

Her colour palettes are very natural and gently reassuring… mother earth will take us back into her bosom and help us heal. The meticulous marks speak of long journeys past, and reach out to our future selves to remind us that we have struggled before and have overcome those obstacles… we can do it again.

I reached out to Ana and asked her a few questions.

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Alors on danse
May 4, 2021

Ashley Guenette’s Alors on danse (Let’s Dance) is one of a series of animal acrylics she has created that are a cross between Canadian myth and Aesopian fable. They are definitely “of the north” and express how closely connected we are to the land from a cultural standpoint in this country.

You can find Ashley on Instagram and at ashleyguenette.com

~Mark Walton

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Renée Mathews: Fluidity and Intuition
February 10, 2022

Renée Mathews: Fluidity and Intuition by Glodeane Brown, Guest Curator SECRETS by Renée Mathews Renée Mathews is an artist currently living... Read More
Stephen Scott
April 27, 2020

There is no question that these are dark time times and dark times call for light. That light is beauty. The beautiful comforts us in times like these when life itself is in question.

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