Pleasing art pairings at Sydenham's Grace Centre

Oct 15, 2014

Over 30 art lovers gathered at the Southern Frontenac Community Service Corporation’s Grace Centre for a stellar afternoon of great art, both in works and words thanks to two accomplished local artists, Wendy Cain and Margaret Hughes.

While their works are in no way similar, hung side by side they represent two very different approaches to art, the results of which are surprisingly complementary.

Margaret Hughes, a former potter and co-owner of Cornerstone, Kingston's premiere fine Canadian craft and Inuit art store, took up chalk pastels years ago. Enjoying their directness and rich hues she approaches painting like one would a lump of clay, digging right in and working in a very direct, hands- on way. As a result the works are fresh and vibrant, and burst forth in an explosion of colour. Her past as a potter is literally apparent in her compositions; her colorful functional ceramic pieces are included in many of her still lifes.

Hughes creates her paintings by layering colour upon colour, often beginning on a black paper background. By allowing some of the black paper to show through, the colours have an added intensity. Pattern and surface decoration are key in these works, with rich, broad swaths of gorgeous colour lying side by side and portraying various table and wall coverings that boast rich plums, bright oranges, purples, blood reds and deep blacks and blues. These works are reminiscent of other colour and pattern-focused painters like Matisse and Cezanne, both of whom Hughes said are influences.

In her talk Hughes spoke of her former work as a potter for 30 years and how working with coloured glazes eventually led her to pastels. “The interaction of having made the pots and then re-presenting them in a two-dimensional form as part of a still life composition presents a stimulating challenge and connects my current practice to my past.”

Artist Wendy Cain, a printmaker/papermaker who teaches printmaking at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and who has participated in over 250 individual and group shows, spoke next. Cain developed her own pulp paper painting technique and currently works out of her studio in Newburg, Ont. Paper and printing making are more process-oriented art forms and Cain's works are crisp, clean and precise, with a certain lightness that makes her pieces appear effortless. In her presentation she demonstrated through slides the processes she uses, and it became clear that each piece involves numerous carefully pre-planned steps. Her most intriguing pieces include her homemade patterned papers, which form the backgrounds of the piece. These beautifully patterned background sections boast mainly fish and natural foliage motifs, on top of which are screen- printed, larger, more central images - things like Grecian urns and other subjects that lend the works a more cerebral quality.

Cain likes to play with juxtaposing seemingly unrelated images in a single frame and this is what gives her work its edge. Considering how the images relate is part of the puzzle she seems to offer up to her viewers and as we learned from her talk, her work is always changing and developing. In contrast to these, some of her newest works involve actually using the pulp/paper mixture as paint by spraying it in layers and creating unique landscape pieces where swirling blue skies are often front and centre.

The complementary nature of both artists’ work and their talks, which gave additional insight into the minds of these two creative and finely tuned artists, made for a very worth-while visit to the Grace Centre on Thanksgiving weekend.

The show will be up until December 12 and many of the works are for sale.