A collaboration between Kingston-based professional artist Joanne Gervais and artistic guest Peggy Lum-Brouillard results in a unique mix of traditional and contemporary art.
Since June, the two artists have been exhibiting painting and sculpting on-site at Gervais’ gallery, located at 107 Princess St. Although the artists exhibit different styles in their works, the collaboration has been successful.
“We paint and sculpt on-site when we can so people can see works in progress,” Gervais said.
The gallery is packed with hundreds of paintings, drawings and designs, as well as a few sculptures, produced by both artists.
The artists work on their artwork at the front of the gallery for viewers to observe their process as they visit the space.
Gervais is most known for her Joie de Vivre style artwork, popularized in Quebec, emphasizes colourful expressions and joyful depictions of Canadian lifestyles and activities.
She also creates historical sketches displayed in the summer gallery.
“There are a lot of original Canadian images. There’s about 30 or 40 of Kingston and of that about 10 are of Queen’s,” Gervais said about her historical sketch collection.
Gervais is also a well-known on-site sketch artist in the Kingston and Queen’s art communities.
She has been commissioned to sketch a historical rendition of White Mountain Ice Cream Shop on Ontario St. as well as sketching Patch Adams during his talk at Queen’s in September 2009.
Lum-Brouillard has contributed her oriental contemporary styles to the summer gallery
alongside Gervais.
Although Lum-Brouillard is somewhat new to the professional Kingston art-world, she has been successful in attracting viewers to her acrylics and watercolours. “This is my first year in a gallery of this capacity and level of profession. Although I’ve been doing it on my own this is the next step toward professional art,” Lum-Brouillard said.
Lum-Brouillard has a wide range of subjects from florals and portraits to astronomy. “Just things that I really feel are interesting to me to do, I’ll do that subject,” she said.
She finds a lot of inspiration through her oriental ethnicity, said. More recently, her interest in astronomy lead her to depict images produced by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Although the two artists’ styles vary, they both believe that their summer gallery has worked out well for both artists.
“It has a double effect of getting good exposure and I was able to sell artwork and receive a lot of feedback about what interests viewers,” Lum-Brouillard said.
The gallery is open through to Labor Day.
“The gallery is running just for the summer for now, but we will most likely be back next summer,” Gervais said.
Tags
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.
