Peer Gallery, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

For those visiting this site for the first time, Peer Gallery, is an artists’ co-operative gallery, formed January,  2002. The Peer Gallery of Contemporary Art is truly worth a special trip to  Lunenburg, and Nova Scotia's South shore.

Located in the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Lunenburg, the gallery exhibits the work of 12 Nova Scotia artists who have established  reputations. The  gallery emphasizes a complete diversity in art viewing: painting, drawing, mixed media, oloured fused glass, raku wall pieces, wood turning, printmaking and other forms of artistic expression.

During the summer season (June 1 - October 15), the exhibit changes  monthly and during the off-season, the gallery hosts solo exhibitions of its  members.

Peer Gallery: Solo & Duo Exhibitions for 2009

Barbara McLean: “Describing Landscape”

In this exhibition Barbara responds to landscape, describing it rather than representing it. All the paintings are oil on canvas. Most are large, abstract and rendered with bold brush stokes. Strong compositions and areas of intense colour compliment the brushwork and create an over all impression of strength and optimism.

Dates: April 30 - May 14
Hours for exhibit: Daily, noon - 5:00
Opening: Saturday, May 2, noon – 5:00
Artist's talk: Sunday, May 10, 3:00

David Pember: “‘Riffs’ With Paint”

David Pember's innovative and eye-catching acrylic paintings, will be on exhibit. His use of steel or EVA board as a base for his paintings, offsets his nuanced handling of colour and gesture, creating a blend of traditional and contemporary.

Dates: May 16 – May 28,
Hours for exhibit: Daily, noon – 4:00,
Opening: Saturday, May 16, noon – 4:00

Regina Coupar: “Prophecy”

Regina will be exhibiting new mixed media works. Having recently completed her Master's degree in Theological Studies, Regina explores the idea of 'prophecy' in historical and contemporary contexts. Adopting a post-modern approach to the problem (both visually and conceptually), she incorporates a variety of media (acrylic collage on canvas, clay, mosaic, etc.), which include imagery and text from various religious, psychological, economic and social constructs.

Dates: October 17–29
Hours for exhibit: Daily, noon – 4:00
Opening: Saturday, October 17, noon – 4:00

Zalman Amit & Susan Hudson: “Cultivation OR Imposition”

Susan & Zalman have joined forces to produce their own sense of how nature is often pushed back and manipulated to suit the viewer. They both handle their surfaces delicately and unexpectedly. Susan in her paintings, using the traditional landscape, interrupts them with a high focus detail of vegetation that doesn’t belong. Zalman, in his wood turnings, pierces the grain of a bowl with a lacelike pattern or implants an exotic material within the whorls of texture.

Dates: October 31 – November 11
Hours for exhibit: Daily, noon – 4:00
Opening: Saturday, October 31, noon – 4:00

During the Off-Season, the gallery is also available for readings, informal lectures, book launches and other community events, making the Peer Gallery an important addition to Lunenburg's cultural scene!

Peer Gallery

167 Lincoln  Street • Lunenburg, Nova  Scotia • (902) 640-3131

In -  Season Hours:  (June 1–October 15): Daily: 10:30-5:30

Off - Season Hours: (November 12 - December 20; March 18 - June 1, 2010) Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday, 12-4pm

Gallery Closed: December 21, 2009 - March 18, 2010

(Special exhibits may extend the posted hours of operation).

Gallery Artists

Zalman Amit •  View Zalman Amit's Gallery

Zalman Amit creates and sculpts exquisite bowls and  other intriguing objects of wood. One can feel the tension of the fibres  as he coaxes his bowls to their final shape. They reveal all the stresses,  colours and graceful age of exotic woods.

Diane Wile–Brumm • View Diane Wile-Brumm's Gallery.

"Using water based media, primarily watercolour, I begin with a fairly detailed pencil drawing, then manipulate the surface and the paint, allowing pencil marks and surprises created by the paint itself to become visible aspects of the finished piece, striving to express an emotional response rather than accurate representation. My preoccupation with social history is evident in my imagery. I like drawing the human figure, but whatever the image, my paintings are usually a type of portrait."

Regina  Coupar • View Regina Coupar's Gallery

Influenced by the writing process, Regina Coupar  approaches her work as narrative, creating series, each of which explores a  theme within a larger intellectual inquiry. Examples include: torso (a series  of partial figures, inspired by broken ancient Greek torsos, representing the  continued fragmentation of women's history), dress (depictions of actual  dresses emphasizing the relationship between body and costume) and breastplate  (near life-size wall torsos highlighting the relationship between armour and  adornment).

Bob Hainstock • View Bob Hainstock's Gallery

Hainstock’s work frequently explores the increasing contrasts and frictions between a shrinking rural culture and swelling urban cultures, and between natural and human-made environments. His studio and home are located 600 feet above Atlantic Canada’s beautiful Annapolis Valley — giving a unique perspective to colors and textures of season and day, but also the economic and social patterns of the rural fabric spread out below.

Anke Holm • View Anke Holm's Gallery

Anke Holm was born in Hamburg, Germany, studied  economics and had a business career as auditor at a chartered accountant  company and manager in the oil trading industry. In 1995 she made the life  changing step to immigrate to the South Shore of Nova Scotia. Here she  reassessed her lifestyle with the emphasis on exploring life quality outside  the corporate world and expressing her creative side. Her fascination with  glass lead her to express her creativity working with this unique seductive  material. The nature of glass is both rigid and delicate. It is a wonderful,  fluid substance and its colours and shapes and textures play with the  light.

Susan Hudson • View Susan Hudson's Gallery

Susan  Hudson  R.C.A., has been labelled a "social graphologist." Her style of  imagery is that of many different elements, prints collaged to form new  original works, gestures of abstracted landscapes combined with focused  digital images. Lush colour and brush stroke is evident and enjoyed. Recently she has drawn upon the past, her source “Fairy Tales”, large pen & ink drawings on 8 ply paper. This work highlights her on going interpretation of the golden age of children’s literature.

Barbara  McLean • View Barbara McLean's Gallery

Over the three years since Barbara's return home from Korea, her paintings have grown in size and intensity. An Asian influence is referenced in some compositions and in the discrete brushwork that characterizes her paintings. Her new abstract landscapes are so full of colour  and energy that paint and paint application have become the true subjects of Barbara's current canvases.

David Pember • View David Pember's Gallery

Using grinders, acrylic  paints and mixed media, colours appear to float on the surface of his  stainless steel plates or like a coloured haze on EVA board, evoking a sense  of peaceful contemplation.

Don Pentz • View Don Pentz' Gallery

Don Pentz, R.C.A., geology and  archaeology are themes that have always intrigued Pentz, and one sees these  influences in the textured surfaces of his recent acrylic paintings. The  images contain hints of landscape, stained objects, crumbling walls, earth  stratification, weathered surfaces, or scars and gouges that tease at  the  imagination.

Anne  Tweed • View Anne Tweed's Gallery.

The inspiration for her work comes primarily from the  landscape of the South Shore of Nova Scotia, but also from other sources such  as photographs from her travels, life studies and her imagination. She works  most frequently in oils but also enjoys printmaking and experimenting with  water media. She is currently working on a series of paintings using the often  overlooked, microscopic landscape of the forest floor as source material.

Tom Ward   • View Tom Ward's Gallery

Tom's paintings are about light and what that particular light evokes both in fact and in mood. He is drawn to a consideration of how  we mark time in the rhythms of daily rural life and how the cyclical aspect of  nature holds a quality of the eternal. He is also drawn by the relationship  which exists between the landscape, the ocean and the people. In terms of  composition, Tom tends toward strong abstract patterns of light and shadow  within the realist images he paints.

Sally Warren • View Sally Warren's Gallery

Originally a textile artist, Sally has turned to other media in recent years; drawing, painting, printmaking and sculpture.   Her work reflects her “weaver’s” lingering fascination with line and texture. The endless variety of the human form often integrated with images of other living things is a focus for much of her work.

Peer Gallery •  167 Lincoln  Street • Lunenburg, Nova  Scotia • (902) 640-3131

Email: Peer Gallery