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. This spring Peer Gallery celebrated twelve years of operation.

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, coloured fused glass, raku & mosaic wall pieces, wood turning, printmaking and other forms of artistic expression.

During the full season (June 1 - October 3), the exhibit changes monthly. During the off-season, the gallery hosts solo exhibitions of its members.

Peer Gallery: Solo & Duo Exhibitions for 2013

Regina Coupar

The Grace Chapel Commission
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, May 4, 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm
ARTIST’S TALK: Saturday, May 4, 3:00 pm
DATES OF EXHIBIT: May 4 – 16
HOURS FOR EXHIBIT: Daily, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Twelve mosaic panels, created in ancient Byzantine style, walk the viewer through four major themes that form the core theology for Grace Chapel: Creation, Distortion, Redemption, and New Creation. The Peer Gallery exhibition will be the only opportunity to view the mosaics closeup.

Anke Holm & Anne Tweed

PLAY!
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, May 18, 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm
ARTIST’S TALK: Sunday, May 26, 3:00 pm
DATES OF EXHIBIT: May 18 – 29
HOURS FOR EXHIBIT: Daily, 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

This exhibition explores the artists’ playful approach to mark-making and working with fluid materials. Anke’s works in fused glass and Anne’s works with coloured inks complement each other in the way that the materials are manipulated and allowed to flow. Play is expressed with not too much constraint by the artist, resulting in the lively interaction of colour and shape. This joyful approach to the creative process results in an exhibition that is full of optimism showing the artists’ passion for their work.

Barbara McLean

Ground Shift
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, October 5, NOON – 5:00 pm
ARTIST’S TALK: Sunday, October 13, 3:00 pm
DATES OF EXHIBIT: October 5 – 17
HOURS FOR EXHIBIT: Daily, Noon – 5:00 pm

In this body of work Barbara presents us with a world in flux - images of instability and change, of broken forms and restless energy.

But there is beauty in this chaos and perhaps even more surprising, a subtle optimism, a belief in the resilience and persistence of life itself. There is no suggestion here that anxieties about global warming should be ignored, nor that we should shrug off any personal effort we could make to influence that dramatic shift. Rather, the feeling pervading these works insists that no matter how much it has been changed, the earth with its diversity and richness of living things will prevail.

These paintings present a statement of a faith in life itself.

Susan Hudson

Take Time
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, October 19, 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm
ARTIST’S TALK: Sunday, October 27, 3:00 pm
DATES OF EXHIBIT: October 5 – 31
HOURS FOR EXHIBIT: Daily, 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

For this exhibit, Susan explores the theme of Time, exhibited as a monthly progression are 24 works on paper.

“Inside any given moment, time is not going anywhere.
Time is a mystery, perhaps the ultimate mystery.
It is deeply wrapped up with the mind/body problem and the mystery of consciousness.
Time is so basic to our experience -- almost more basic than "experience" itself.
Inside any given moment, time is not going anywhere.
Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.”

Tom Ward

New Works
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, November 2, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
DATES OF EXHIBIT: November 2 - 13
HOURS FOR EXHIBIT: Daily, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

New watercolours.

Peer Gallery

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

In -  Season Hours:  (May 30 - October 2): Daily: 10:30-5:30

Off - Season Hours: (November 14 - December 22)
Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday, 12-4 pm

Gallery Closed: December 22, 2013
(Special exhibits may extend the posted hours of operation).

Gallery Artists

George Walford • View George Walford's Gallery

George Walford believes that chance is one element that makes his work a daily adventure. He approaches it without detailed intention or preconception. Each piece is constructed organically and spontaneously with no predetermined image in mind. The combination of materials, textures, washes and glazes of acrylics and oils applied without a preconceived notion of the end result, allows for unforeseen effects. These are encouraged with as little manipulation as possible so as to let each piece evolve. Colours and textures are applied until the paintings achieve what he recognizes as a presence or energy of their own.

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.

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.

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.

Barbara  McLean • View Barbara McLean's Gallery

Barbara McLean’s paintings are motivated by her home environment in rural Nova Scotia. Her landscapes are interpretations rather than representations of what she sees and feels. Although these canvases hold many natural references, the abstract aspects which have always been there, are becoming more evident and powerful. From these landscapes, it seems a natural next step for Barbara to move into total abstraction. Barbara took this step in her September 2009 exhibition — Passages. (Craig Gallery, Halifax). This year at Peer Gallery she will continue to offer new landscape paintings along with works from her on going exploration of abstraction.

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.

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.

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

My paintings are realistic and accessible. It always pleases me when the work evokes a personal response or memory in a viewer, but it is the application of the paint itself, not representation that keeps me painting. Each piece begins with a fairly detailed drawing, but in applying the pigment I allow it to lead me. Watercolour, which is famously unpredictable and 'bossy', lends itself well to this approach, continues to fascinate me, and remains my usual medium. I also work with acrylics and in some pieces explore combinations of water-based media.

With an emphasis on figure work and still life, my subject matter usually reflects whatever is prominent in my thinking at the time. Certain themes recur: nature, literature, social history, that which links us ˆ to the past, to each other, to the planet. My current series, entitled 'Locavore', is based on my commitment to local food sources as a way of nurturing community and protecting the environment.

I am primarily a studio painter, using a variety of photographs as reference material, though I work en plein air or from life whenever I can.

Regina  Coupar • View Regina Coupar's Gallery

Art functions in two ways in my life: it is the process by which I 'figure things out' and it provides a vehicle by which I sometimes communicate my findings to others. As such, the content of my art practice has followed the trajectory of my life. For example, when I was young and in awe of the landscape, my art tended to be representational, imitating that which I found most inspiring. When I went through a divorce, my art became darker, reflecting the struggles of oppression and emancipation. As I worked on my Masters Degree in Theological Studies, I used my art to question traditional theological assumptions (my own and those of western culture) and to explore new ways of understanding religion. Presently, I am continuing that exploration as part of my doctoral program at the Toronto School of Theology.

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.

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.

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

Email: Peer Gallery