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5 Days Left To View Sherelle Wilsack’s Exhibition “Feast”
Sherelle Wilsack taps the more obviously figural. She loves vivid hues, a flat, simplified linear style and a frontal pose that make her human figures look like ancient icons, though without the sacred messages. In Mennonite Girl, a big oil on canvas, the sitter poses against a bright acid-green background. This green contrasts with the sombre darkness of her clothing, but is intensified by the scarlet cap. She looks directly at us. Wilsack carefully outlines the almond-shaped eyes, long nose and red lips. But she paints the cheeks as two soft-edged red circles and adds dark smudges to the eyes.
‘Mennonite’ by Sherelle Wilsack
Wilsack’s simplified style is at its best in the way she depicts the hand. It sticks out of the blue of the dress but it’s not attached to an arm or sleeve. Her repertoire also includes animals, fruit and trees, all of them bright and beautiful, including a cheeky lamb, a big red and green profile portrait of a rooster and pair of pears ready to burst out of their frames.
Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art.
Sherelle Wilsack
What: Feast
Where: James North Studio, 328 James St. N.
When: until June 3
Phone: 905-528-6437
New Exhibition: Sherelle Willsack, “Feast”, Oils & Chalk Pastels, May 11 – June 3
Opening Reception 7 pm May 11 during the June James North Art Crawl
See new work by the James North Art Collective’s members in the Kitchen Gallery
and downstairs in the Photography Gallery
Wednesday – Saturday, 12 noon – 5 pm & Sunday 12 noon – 4 pm
2 New Exhibitions Open Friday, April 13, 7 pm
Frances Ward “Paint”
Doug Carter’s “Cultural Debris: A Flea Market Art Exhibition”
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Join us at the James North Studio, 328 James Street North, Hamilton
Friday night April 13 for the opening of the exhibitions during the April James North Art Crawl from 7 pm.
Music by pianist Juke Joint Jimmy & bassist Wild Bill.
Closing reception Sunday, May 6, 1 – 3 pm
See new work by the James North Art Collective’s members in the Kitchen Gallery and downstairs in the Photography Gallery.
features new member Dave Pijuan-Nomura & “Architecture” new work by Jim Chambers and Jean Crankshaw, to preview go to
http://jamesnorthartcollective.com/photographers-gallery/
Wednesday – Saturday, 12 noon – 5 pm & Sunday 12 noon – 4 pm
We’re recycling the “RE “Show Sunday April 1 at
We have scheduled a special event on Sunday April 1, 2012, 2 – 4 pm at the James North Art Collective.
Join us as we celebrate Earth Month with a open house featuring a short artist’s talk about the repurposed and recycled materials in the works on display. Light refreshments will be served.
The “RE” SHOW features glass and wood furnitre and sculpture by David McLaughlin
All works made from recycled, reused and repurposed materials.
Like this:
New Exhibition March 6: David McLaughlin, “the RE show”, with music by the J&B Blues Band.
Join us Friday night March 9 for the opening reception during the March James North Art Crawl from 7 pm.
Download the invitation to “the RE show” from the Box widget in the right hand side bar.
Wednesday – Saturday, 12 noon – 5 pm & Sunday 12 noon – 4 pm.
Like this:
Ready for Red? Regina Haggo, Feb. 23, 2012, The Hamilton Spectator
Red is beautiful. In Russian, that statement is almost tautologous, since an older meaning of the word for red is “beautiful.”
Red cries out for attention. It evokes life, excitement, danger, love and hunger.
And it’s the inspiration for Red, a group show by the James North Art Collective.
Red’s Homecoming, by Kelly Drennan, is a striking mixed-media construction that juxtaposes red with white and black. The Hamilton artist, who likes fairy tales, introduces us to Little Red Riding Hood with a twist.
Drennan’s red-hooded heroine, concisely modelled with a few basic materials, takes centre stage. She leaps out with her red hoodie and small red mouth against a white face. A white furry wolf’s head rests on her forehead.
Red carries a scroll, made of birchbark, tied with red string. Drennan painted the scroll black. “White usually represents purity, innocence, peace, virginity,” she says. “Having been out in the world, Red has learned that what goes on in the world is not so white. The scroll contains life lessons.”
Drennan imagines Red, now white-haired and wiser, returning to her childhood village, represented by rows of squares topped with triangles, the traditional shapes of houses. She has conquered her fears and returns home triumphant.
“Red,” Drennan says of her heroine, “is a symbol of female strength, independence and survival.”
Sandee Ewasiuk offers a couple of red bird paintings. In Red Birds, a woman, barefoot but wearing a red dress and a string of pearls, appears to be sitting in a tree flanked by a pair of red birds, symbols of love, life and rebirth.
Ewasiuk’s simplified style is at its best. She paints the woman with a large head, big heavily lidded eyes, and long arms and legs. The birds are succinctly depicted as irregular ovals tapering sharply at the ends. Ewasiuk links the three through the colour red, then adds soft-edged shapes in greens, blues and pinks.
Drennan and Ewasiuk have simplified their human figures, but Gise Trauttmansdorff needs no helping hand when it comes to simplification. The local ceramist has reduced her figure to a white arm and hand sticking out of the wall. It’s waiting to grab us as we walk by, offering us excitement in the form of a red key on a chain dangling from the elegant fingers. Dare we take it?
John Kinsella’s take on red involves reds in the local landscape. Willow Reflections, Stoney Creek, is one of several of his landscapes in this exhibition. In this wonderfully textured small painting, Kinsella focuses on a lone golden tree seen across a body of water. He paints the sky as a series of radiating brush strokes so that lines of energy seem to emanate from the tree.
The tree’s verticality joins the brilliantly coloured horizontals, including a strip of red that further energizes the view.
There are more great pieces by David McLaughlin, Renate Minoo, Doreen Veri and Frances Ward, among others. And don’t miss the photographic section of the exhibition downstairs.
See photos of work in the exhibition at http://www.thespec.com/whatson/article/675064–ready-for-red
Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art.
