Local artists chosen for annual art exhibition – Timmins Press

Four members of the Porcupine Art Club have been selected for the Northern Ontario Art Association’s (NOAA) 63rd-annual juried exhibition.

One of those members, Karina Douglas-Takayesu, who has been painting with the art club for 10 years, said she was happy to hear her painting was chosen.

“It can be a little bit of a challenge getting in, but it’s nice to have the recognition.”

This is Douglas-Takayesu’s second time being selected for the exhibition, which sees around 200 submitted paintings, but only the top 40 are chosen by two jurors.

This year’s exhibition was organized by VISIONorth Arts in Cochrane, and was juried by Maxine Noel and Pam Atherton.

Karen Bachmann, the director and curator for the Timmins Museum: National Exhibition Centre, said the artwork featured in the exhibition was selected from paintings done by members of fifteen Northern Ontario art clubs, adding the artists are located from Algoma to Walden.

The pieces travel across Northern Ontario on a year-long tour to be shown in the different communities that participated.

Douglas-Takayesu, who is the Timmins Public Library’s reference librarian, said her painting is two years in the making, and based on the Ontario Northland Christmas Train that passed through Iroquois falls in 2017.

“I’m glad it does sort of encapsulate a piece of history because sadly they have at least as of this year cancelled the program. Hopefully they might bring it back. Maybe this painting will convince people to have it because it’s been about seven years and I mean just any time that they show up the children are very enthusiastic about it.”

Ontario Northland announced last year it would not continue with the Christmas train due to a workforce shortage, but did say it wanted to find other ways to celebrate the holidays with all the communities the train visited.

“One of the things that’s really challenging is if you look you can see there’s all sorts of different types of colours because of the lighting. The unique lighting of the Christmas decorations and that made it a challenge, so it’s also to try and render it in watercolour. This is actually the first time I’ve done a full sheet watercolour,” Douglas-Takayesu said, adding the painting is a 22 by 30-inch sheet that has been matted and framed a little smaller.

“Some of my friends in the art club are saying, ‘that’s a watercolour?’ so yes it’s sort of like pushing the boundaries of the media.”

Douglas-Takayesu said it took her “a few all-nighters” to complete the painting, which is modelled after a number of photos she took when she went to see the train in downtown Iroquois Falls.

“It’s really fun and challenging trying to do a night scene. Just as an example, the sky is about six different layers of colour to do that. Starting with the white background which was masked off to do the stars and then was built up to do that sort of wintry (look) where you have a little bit of the orange from the street lights and then you have the natural sky.

“That year, it was about a -30 C night, with very little snow so that’s why when you look at the scene there’s not much snow, and actually the snow of course is reflecting all the colours off the lights.”

Douglas-Takayesu said she joined the Porcupine Art Club because she has always been interested in art. She also enjoys the peer support because “a lot of the times you’re literally just in your little world painting. I mean when I’m painting at two o’clock in the morning, it’s just by yourself. You’re often in that zone and it’s nice to come out and see what others have done and discuss.”

The three other members from the art club who were selected to be part of the exhibition are Bruce MacKinnon, Catharine Cribbs and Shafik Al-Hamdani.

Paintings are now submitted to the jurors digitally as a photo that is a true representation of the painting.

Douglas-Takayesu said this makes it trickier for artists to submit their work because some paintings continue onto the side of the canvas and the submitted photo may lose the depth of the art.

Before going digital a few years ago, paintings were shipped off to the jurors to be judged and then sent back to the artist.

Now, paintings that are not chosen to be featured can be put in a slide show so they still go on the tour which is another way to showcase your work, said Douglas-Takayesu.

In the future, she said she hopes to enter more of her artwork which she tries to submit every year, adding that she likes the fact that the art goes on tour so it is not only seen locally but also all over Northern Ontario.

The exhibition is being held in the Grey Gallery at the Timmins Museum and will be open to the public from now until Jan. 26. Admission is free.