What’s with all the brushes?
Painters need brushes to create the best marks and strokes to convey their visual messages.
Painting
Wanna see my art on the cover
On this year’s cover of NorthwesTel’s 2018/19 phone directory is Gabrielle Watts’ sensational painting, Mount Lorne From Above.
Ready, set, paint your windows!
Brenda Buren (left) and Lindsay Agar (right) present staff from BMO ribbons for Best Bank and Best Overall in the 2017 Business Decor Competition Yukon businesses have been celebrating Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous with window painting and decorating for decades. The festive atmosphere builds anticipation for the event and helps cultivate the Klondike Gold Rush-era feel …
Stream of Consciousness
Visit the Academic and Skills Development office in the A-wing of Yukon College, and you’ll be greeted with words of empowerment on the backs of a stream of 16 cedar salmon in a work of art created by local artist Cheryl Teya. On each salmon plaque is a core value, such as kindness, respect, goals. …
Celebrating the Power of Art
A mural festival in the Yukon will draw artists, youth, and the general public together to decorate some buildings in Whitehorse with a colourful palette. The 2-month long Yukon Heritage Mural Art Festival is kicking off on Saturday, and organizers are inviting anyone and everyone to pop by, check out what’s going on, pick up …
Colour The Yukon
Erin Dixon is an artist with a passion for Yukon landscapes. “I was into colouring before it was hot,” she says with a laugh. A self described avid colourer, Dixon noticed a vacancy, “I know that colouring is really popular right now and I wanted to fill the void for Yukoners and visitors wishing for …
Yukon See It Here: Klondike Visitors Association
Employees at Klondike Visitors Association were surprised to find that a Jim Robb original hung on the wall for the centre. Early in summer, a call from Doug Thomas (also known as Gold Nougie Dougie), revealed to them that a painting of the Palace Grand Theatre (the only one Jim Robb has done), which staff …
Yukon See It Here: Klondike Visitors Association Read More »
Calling All Arty Teens
From November 2 to 5, youth from all over the Yukon will be converging on Dawson City to hone their art skills in the 16th annual Youth Art Enrichment Program. Hosted by the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (KIAC), the four-day program is for Yukon students in Grades 9 to 12 who are …
A Strong Indigenous Female Presence at Arts Underground
Two new exhibitions curated by Jennifer Bowen Allen, of the Dene Nation, opened Sept. 2 at Arts Underground. In the Focus Gallery, a group show called Hands of Time: Bush Women on the Land honours the way that women who live on the land have supported cultural continuity by maintaining their traditional practices. In the …
A Strong Indigenous Female Presence at Arts Underground Read More »
A Colouring Book for Adults
When Kyley Henderson was in elementary school her mother, Elaine, encouraged her to draw, and one year a drawing of hers was used in the Robert Service School yearbook. Elaine, who is herself a landscape painter and sculptor, says that she always encouraged Kyley to develop her art as a kid. Kyley remembers her mother telling …
How Foster Care Shapes Lives
Amelia Merhar knows what it’s like to be a foster child, to go from home to home, and to be without a home at all. She wonders how that movement affects young people today, so she’s asking them to tell us, through art. Merhar, also known as Yukon’s singing, ukulele-playing Big Mama Lele, has just …
Artists Going Flat-Out
Question: What does a steam roller have in common with wood block printing? Answer: Joyce Majiski and Linda Leon. The two Yukon artists are hosting a spectacular event from August 5 to 7. Each day between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. at the skating oval in Shipyards Park a road packer will be rolling over …
Bright Colours, Divergent Stories
Two brightly coloured shows of paintings adorn the walls of Arts Underground. While they share intense palettes, their worldviews contrast profoundly. The Things You Know by Whitehorse artist Heather Von Steinhagen offers a surreal, disturbing outlook, while Leaps and Bounds by Marsh Lake artist Ferryn Nowatzki depicts a more light-hearted vision. Dystopia reigns Von Steinhagen’s …
Chalk It Up
I had a great chat recently with Heidi Loos. She is organizing the first Yukon Chalk Art Festival for Unlikely Events Yukon. The Festival will run June 11 and 12, 2016, 10 am. to 5 pm. at the Kwanlin Dun Cultural Centre parking lot. Two workshops will take place at the parking lot of Dana …
Heidi Hehn is Raven Mad
Heidi Hehn is crazy for ravens. It’s a taste she shares with many northerners. These big, black, intelligent birds bring wilderness into the city. Sometimes they bring that wildness closer than you’d like it, for example, when they tear apart the garbage in the back of a pickup truck. However, many people really appreciate their …
Dawson and the Harrison Effect
I’ve been enjoying a couple of relatively new books about the work of the latecTed Harrison. They are Ted Harrison Collected (Douglas & McIntyre) and A Brush full of Colour (Pajama Press). The first one is a trade paperback collection of the 91 serigraph posters he created and sold. The second is a hardcover children’s …
Painting and a Party
Having reached a certain age, I’m grateful for the younger, hipper people in my life who update me up on popular culture. My friend Katie is such a person. She told me about Groupons, longboards, and Snapchat. Long before the last federal election, she explained to me what cage fighting was. She expands my slang …
A Budding Artist
When my nephew was six he ran a grocery store. He sorted cans of fruit, vegetables and soup. He priced each can and stocked shelves. Then he sold the products to his sister and brother. He was able to add the prices and make change in his head. At a very young age his mathematical …
Get Your Greens
Whet your appetite for lunch on Lillian Loponen’s new canvases at the Yukon College Hilltop Bistro this fall. The show, called Touch of Green: Enchanted Places, explores the colour green in washes and gestural brushstrokes. The show will be on display at the College’s fine dining lunch restaurant until mid December. Jacqueline Bedard, the Director …
Something to hold
We have a young, emerging artist in our midst who still has a fondness for that old-fashioned medium … of paper. Yeah, Heather Von Steinhagen has a website, too. This just makes her Many Late Nights Summertime ‘Zine easier to see and contribute to for her friends and peers across the country. But, paper, “is …
The Brush Stroke
Hi, I’m Joslyn, and I’m afraid of…painting. More specifically, I’m afraid of looking silly because I’m bad at painting in front of those who are good at it. And so, though I have long longed to walk up to an easel and express myself all over it, I have shyly avoided every opportunity to do …
Kin and Creation
Before he met his wife, Simon Gilpin’s paintings were dreary — depicting cloudfilled skies. After, he created wide-open, blue-skied paintings. “I only just realized I did that.” Gilpin used to destroy work he didn’t like. Now, “it’s not fair for me to judge.” Paintings he doesn’t like move others to tears. He lets his paintings …
A Tribute to a Colourful Artist
“I’ve had a good demand for my work, so I didn’t have to hang anything.” Jim Robb says. “It was never my thing to put stuff on exhibition.”
My Husband, the Artist
My husband, Ken Burke, was a late bloomer. It wasn’t until he retired from Canada Flooring in 1998, that he took up painting. As his wife, I knew he was looking for a hobby to fill his leisure time, and I also recognized he has artistic talent. So I encouraged him to take an art …
Capturing Something Intangible
If you need a break from winter’s dominating shades of grey, a collection of paintings at the Yukon Arts Centre will remind you how colourful the Northern landscape is during the rest of the year. The centre is hosting two solo shows featuring the work of icksYellowknife artist Jennifer Walden and Yukon artist Jane Isakson. …
Painting pets
Having your portrait painted is a way of immortalizing yourself – popes, kings and queens have all done it. But what about pets? Ange Bonnici, programs coordinator at the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (KIAC) in Dawson City, has decided it’s high time to include pets in the everlasting world of portraits. In 2011, …
Exploring multiple selves: Montreal artist explores her psyche
Marigold Santos likes the idea of a multiple self. The Montreal-based artist has a new exhibition at the ODD Gallery in Dawson City, which runs from October 3 to November 1. The four large-scale mixed media drawings on canvas feature imagery of body fragmentation arising from foundations of movement, migration, and change within a physical …
Exploring multiple selves: Montreal artist explores her psyche Read More »
Telegrams from the Chilkoot Trail: Nicole Bauberger’s new show at the Transportation Museum
This past July, if you were hiking the Chilkoot, you may have caught a glimpse of a woman in a white dress, grubby from travel, walking the iconic trail. Strains of her voice could be heard drifting around camp in the evenings, as she alternated between story and song, and her sharp eyes captured images …
Thine Art
Sonnet 1 The grace of she who moves like silken water, her feet the slaves to wild demanding beats. The master of motion and most pleasant to watch, her dance to leap to fly with sky she meets. A twist, a flick, a painter is painting quick, with red, with black, with orange a colour …
World of Words: Painting a northern paradise
Forty years ago, an undiscovered English painter, new to the Yukon, had his first Canadian art show at the Whitehorse Public Library. Now, that painter, Ted Harrison, is the subject of the biography Painting Paradise by Katherine Gibson. On August 26, at 5 p.m., Yukoners can join both artist and author at the Yukon Arts …
An Icon in Yukon History
If it’s true that artists force a culture to come to terms with itself, then few people have helped define the Yukon more than Jim Robb. We all know his work: the billowing drifts of snow, the wispy chimney smoke, the happy huskies and, of course, the cabins – canting outward from their base. Robb …
Her art can be everywhere and everything
Within half an hour of drinking coffee at Umbellula Café, Deanna Slonski had said hello to seven people. “Well, with the kids growing up here and volunteering and my line of work …” she says with a shrug and slightly embarrassed smile. She hadn’t realized she knew so many people there this morning. And many …
A Little Off the Top: I Am Curious (Orange)
Heidi Hehn didn’t set out to do a Halloween-themed show. It just kind of turned out that way. “I like to work sometimes in just one or two colours,” the Whitehorse painter explains. “I started doing this series of landscapes around the Yukon in the summer that was just in oranges and this sort of maroon …
