Two things the Gulf Islands offer to visitors and residents in abundance are nature and art.
Those two elements have converged beautifully at the Unexpected Bateman fine art exhibition on until April 27 at Mahon Hall. As this year’s rendition of Salt Spring Arts’ Spring Art Show, the story of Robert McLellan Bateman’s artistic life expresses the connection between and the necessity of both art and nature to nurture and sustain us.
The exhibition illustrates how Bateman’s fascination with all facets of the natural world as a boy in Ontario led to him becoming an artist. While his international reputation is rooted in his realistic paintings of wildlife, the exhibit initiated and first curated at the Penticton Art Gallery by its director/curator Paul Crawford, with Salt Spring’s Zoe Zafiris-Casey curating the Mahon Hall show, shares many other facets of the artist through his long lifestime of making art. Quotes and explanatory notes on the works enhance the viewers’ experience, as did Bateman’s stories shared with the crowd at the opening event on April 11.
Even more of the Bateman story will be told at an ArtSpring exhibition next month. Confluence: The Bateman Collection, also curated by Zafiris-Casey, will consist of art and collectibles from the lifetimes of travel and experiences of Bateman and his wife Birgit Freybe Bateman.
At ArtSpring now (until April 21) is a remarkable exhibit of work by seven Salt Spring artists. Susan Benson, Seth Berkowitz, Anna Gustafson, Jane MacKenzie, April Mackey, Anette Schrage and Michela Sorrentino share their interpretations of the afterlife in Undiscovered Country, the title taken from a phrase in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
For the last few weeks at the Point Gallery, islanders and visitors had another look into the life and extraordinarily moving work of Ian Thomas, whose retrospective exhibit ran at ArtSpring last May. This fall, Mahon Hall is home to the Salt Spring National Art Prize Finalists’ Exhibition, and the Parallel Art Show will run at ArtSpring. Year-round, fine local art is found at any number of wonderful gallery spaces.
People don’t have to be educated in the visual arts to reap its benefits. In what feel like extraordinarily chaotic times, we can never overindulge in either art or nature.