Novel Readings

I have been on two more small art adventures so far.

One was accidental! I was cutting through the lane that now runs between Birmingham and Queen (past the new Fluevog store, locals will know what I mean) to get to Weird Harbour (again, IYKYK) and happened across a small gallery that had just opened a few days earlier. It is called ARTport, and it features “local artists from the Halifax Regional Municipality.”

Once again, I was particularly drawn to the watercolours, especially those by Judith Orr. You can see an array of them on her Facebook page. I am wary about posting photographs of working artists’ originals, so I don’t have specific examples to show you, but it struck me again that the qualities I like include looseness, transparency, and simplicity.

Then last night I took advantage of the AGNS’s free Thursday evening admission to go check out their exhibition of watercolours by the early 20th-century artist Henry Rosenberg before it closes in early August. I did take a photograph of one of these just as a sample; it is the same one that they reproduced on a much larger scale on the wall.

Visiting local galleries means, probably inevitably, seeing a lot of paintings of local scenes. In addition to whatever I might learn about art or art appreciation, it is possible that spending time with these works is going to enhance my appreciation of Nova Scotia’s landscape, with which I have long had an ambivalent relationship. It is just so not like the landscapes I grew up with in B.C., which are not only precious in that way our childhood landscapes are because they are so entwined with our earliest memories and oldest loves (see The Mill on the Floss for more eloquence about this) but just more grand, I might even say more sublime. Everything here has always seemed so flat, and for so many months of the year, so drab.

I have come to love specific nearby locations, especially Point Pleasant Park, which has reconciled me somewhat to those strong horizontal lines and the colours of the Atlantic, but I do not get excited about Nova Scotia landscapes in general. I realize that I have never been to some of the more spectacular parts of the province, including Cape Breton. Heck, I still haven’t even been to Peggy’s Cove! That’s also on my bingo card for this summer – but because I hate car travel so much, it’s just really difficult for me to get around and see what I might be missing. By showing me what they see and love, these artists are helping me see the province a bit differently, perhaps a bit more positively.

I popped in to look at Maud Lewis’s house again. It’s very sweet but I am not really sold on the artistic merits of her paintings. I get that they are “folk art,” not . . . whatever the alternative is. They are bright and cute, I guess. And I wandered for a minute in the Joan Jonas exhibit “We come from the sea” but it was not for me.