The Women’s Art Association of Hamilton unveils its annual exhibition

Anita Thomas goes out on her motorcycle, with or without husband, to boost her creativity.

“I find it really energizes, inspires, and helps to ground myself again for painting,” she says. “Camera slung over my shoulder — if I can convince him to stop for a moment — I can quickly take a shot for reference and then be off again.”

Anne Smythe, camera in hand, energizes her artistic muse when walking with her dog.

Both women transmute their sensitivity to their surroundings into art. Paintings by both of them are part of “Perception,” an exhibition by the Women’s Art Association of Hamilton at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. This annual exhibition, the 127th, comprises 30 pieces by 23 artists.

Thomas, who has worked in fashion, tackles a variety of art-making materials and techniques, including photography and painting. She is very passionate about painting with encaustic, an ancient hot-wax technique using beeswax and raw pigments.

“I make my own medium and encaustic paint,” she tells me. “The alchemy of it all is so addictive. Each layer is fused to the previous with the heat of a blow torch.”

This leads to wonderfully dynamic landscapes like “Deafening Silence.” Thomas likes how well encaustic suits her subject.

“Layers and layers can be built up with varying levels of translucency, creating depth, luminosity, and giving it an ethereal quality,” she says. “You can create such contrasting textures, too, from smooth and highly polished surfaces to richly textured layers that have been sculpted.”

In spite of a photographic reference, Thomas’s landscape is not of a particular place.

“The wind-swept fields are more of a representation of turbulent emotions, transience of life, passing of time, and desolation. At a glance, some people see snowy fields, others see sandy beaches. Either could be right, but deeper than that, I don’t know if I’d want people to go. It’s an uncomfortable feeling for me when a place that can be considered beautiful can also make me feel alone or hopeless.”

Thomas won an Honourable Mention for this painting. An Honourable Mention also went to Smythe for “Inside Out — Man.” Unlike Thomas’s loosely representational landscape, Smythe paints in a lifelike style. But her paintings are more surreal, that is, she takes the ordinary and makes it strange through a juxtaposition of unlikely settings and events.

In “Inside Out — Man,” for instance, she creates a pleasing landscape of wildflowers, grasses, water, a distant shore with trees, and a blue sky with white clouds. A path in the foreground looks inviting. But most of this path is occupied by a barefooted man in a dark suit sitting on a chair that belongs indoors. Hand on chin in a thoughtful attitude, he’s watching a red-winged blackbird.

Smythe, who paints every day, says this oil is part of a series she created during the pandemic. Another work in this series is included in this exhibition.

“With the pandemic, we were all, unfortunately, very much on the inside looking out,” she says. ”I incorporate the beauty of what I have seen with the need to make a statement, or to make a traditional landscape painting more interesting.”

The two other award winners are Mary Cordeiro and Monique Campbell. And of course, there are other great works in this exhibition.

Lorraine Coakley, a wiz at cityscapes, observes rural life in “Second Chance.” She invites us into a sunny and restful landscape that recedes into the distance through strong horizontal spaces. In the spacious foreground a pair of goats, some chickens and a turkey busy themselves.

Coakley’s relatively pared-down scene contrasts with Jennifer Donolo’s more complex “Reflections on the Humber River.” The river hugs the shore and narrows as it winds its way into the distance. Rich colours and vibrant brush strokes abound. Donolo paints the river, for instance, in short horizontal strokes and envisions the dense vegetation as thin sinuous lines complemented by dabs of paint.

Elizabeth Malara-Wieczorek offers a wonderfully concise narrative with only two objects. In “Bertie, My Little Gourmand,” a cockatoo perches on a tall jar filled with twigs and leaves. The bird watches the viewer watching the bird. There are textures aplenty: the softness of the bird’s feathers, the glossiness of the glass jar and the raggedness of its contents.

Perception

Women’s Art Association of Hamilton 127th annual exhibition

Where: Fischer Gallery, Art Gallery of Hamilton, 123 King St. W.

When: until June 25

Admission: free to Fischer Gallery

Phone: 905-527-6610

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