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, coloured fused glass, raku & mosaic wall pieces, wood turning, printmaking and other forms of artistic expression.
This spring Peer Gallery celebrated its tenth birthday with a book. To view the book, visit Blurb and type in Peer Gallery in the open slot on the right .
During the summer season (June 1 - October 20), the exhibit changes monthly and during the off-season, the gallery hosts solo exhibitions of its members
Peer Gallery: Solo & Duo Exhibitions for 2011
Zalman Amit & Susan Hudson
“Eclectica & Coverings"
Recent wood objects & paintings: The recent combined almost abstracted paintings of Susan and the decorated surfaces of Zalman’s wooden pieces will intrigue and captivate the viewer.
Dates: October 22 – November 3
Artists' Talk: Sunday, October 30, 3:00
Hours for exhibit: Daily, noon – 4:00
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 22, 1:00 –
5:00
Artists' Statements
My contribution to this show is an eclectic array of works representing what I have been doing during the past year. The work is eclectic in that I have no commitment to a specific style or approach. Instead it depicts my attempts to embark on new approaches as well as new techniques. In my new work, I have reduced the net contribution of woodturning and increased the involvement of carving, piercing, inlay and colouring. Perhaps even more importantly, the work reflects an effort to combine these techniques in the direction of creating functional sculptures.
These new acrylic paintings refer to the complexity of draped fabric over forms, either bed-scapes, sheeting on cloths lines and the draped figure. Susan has abstracted the compositions to create new horizons that echo rivers, rock fragments, cliffs and rumpled surfaces
Regina Coupar
“To Hell and Back”
my summer with Dante
An exhibition of new paintings and mosaics.
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 5, noon – 4:00pm
Artist's talk: Sunday, November 13, 3:00
Dates: November 5 –
16, closed Remembrance Day
Hours for exhibit: Daily, noon - 4:00
Artist’s Statement
Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy is an epic poem telling the story of a guided journey through the depths of hell to the heights of paradise. But it is much more than that. Written in the early part of the 1300s, when political and religious worlds were entirely intermingled, Dante's Comedy was written in the vernacular, permitting his many layers of meaning – religious, moral, emotional – and his wonderful style to be felt by powerful and powerless alike. His work continues to shed metaphorical light on personal growth and social responsibility for those who encounter it today.
Respecting Dante's penchant for order and multi-leveled meaning, I have sought to merge the content of my personal hells, purgations, and raptures with the ordered progression of Dante's journey – through the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. My summer with Dante has been humbling, revealing, and cathartic as I have struggled to understand better my own role in shaping my life and my destiny. Relying heavily on John Ciardi's translation of Dante, I have created images and chosen Cantos which express, for me, the journey to hell and back.
Artist's Bio: Regina Coupar is an artist and writer living in Chester Basin. She is the author of five books; her artworks have been exhibited across Canada and in the United States and are included in numerous public and private collections. She holds a BA in Religious Studies and Fine Art, a Master’s degree in Theological Studies, and is presently working on a doctoral degree at the University of Toronto (TST). From 2007-2011 she was Exhibitions Director/Curator of the Arts and Theology Program at the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax. Her primary interest is the intersection between creativity and spirituality. (For more info. contact Regina).
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 3–October 20): Daily: 10:30-5:30
Off - Season Hours: (November
17 - December 23; March 29 - June 1, 2012)
Thursday, Friday,
Saturday & Sunday, 12-4pm
Gallery Closed: December 23 to March
(Special exhibits may extend the posted hours of operation).
Gallery Artists
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.
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