Ontario Society of Artists Summer Exhibition 2009

In the spring of this year I was privileged to be a member of a juried art show put on by the Ontario Society of Artists. For 137 years this organization of professional artists has fostered and promoted outstanding Ontario artists.

The OSA has played a key role in the establishment of some of Ontario’s most important cultural institutions: The Art Gallery of Ontario, The Ontario College of Art and Design and the National Gallery of Canada to name a few. Many members of the OSA are also key members of the prestigious Arts & Letters Club of Toronto.

Honoured to be a jury member for this important event I looked forward to see what the artists had to offer. To put it bluntly, I was blown away by the quality of the work submitted. These are truly some of the best professional artists currently working in Ontario.

I was so impressed with these artists that I submitted a request to have Gallery de Boer – Fine Art & Jazz be one of the ten galleries to participate in the Ontario Society of Artists Summer Exhibitions 2009. I was thrilled to be accepted as a partner in this important series of exhibitions.

I hand picked 14 of the artists and a total of 151 pieces for our stage of the Ontario Society of Artists Summer Exhibitions 2009. These artists cover a wide range of styles, media and subject matter. Regardless of your taste, I think you’ll agree that each of the works displayed in our main gallery is of spectacular quality.

This exhibition is currently installed and will remain until October 9th. We will be hosting a Reception on Friday September 11^th from 7:00 – 10:00 pm, when you will have an opportunity to meet all of the participating artists.

However, please don’t wait until September 11^th. I know you’ll want to hurry in to view this important and impressive exhibit and sale.

Ron de Boer

Alejandro Rabazo was born in Extremadura, Spain, and moved to Toronto in 1960. As a cartographer, he specialized in the production of historical maps as well as panoramic architectural renderings.



The passion for architecture would later on inspire the extensive series of paintings called “Views of Toronto”. Years of requirements for detail in mapping and architecture, as well as his fascination for textures, would later on be reflected in his love for the precision of photorealism in the new series of “Still Life”.



After a life of precise drawings in maps and architecture, I had produced an extensive collection of still life paintings called “Fruits of the Earth”, realistic portraits of fruits and vegetables where I try to capture the beautiful texture of common fruits and vegetables.

I live in North Wellington County, enjoying the beauty of this lovely landscape, and have been exhibiting my work and leading creative workshops for over 20 years. Teaching collage and encaustic inspires me - as I witness the joy of shared creativity and discovery. Nature also inspires me, as I am awe-stuck by the beautiful details that surround us.



Some of the themes I work with: the wildness of nature, change of seasons, (the passage of time) and the human experience in all its complexity and beauty. The natural world inspires me to use organic materials... nature contain elements that reflect the cycle of growth, decay and regeneration. This cycle fascinates me.



The creating of art is a way for me to explore these ideas. Spending time in nature and really seeing what is there gives me the opportunity to find beauty 'everywhere'. In the studio, the process involves the layering of collage materials: paper, photos, fabric, glass, metal - combined with oil paint and encaustic (beeswax and oil pigment fused with heat - usually a blow torch or heat gun). The organic items (seeds, leaves, wood, earth, rocks, petals, thorns, etc.) are imbedded in layers of wax. Some layers are mostly or partially obscured, lending texture and hinting at mystery. Gouging into these layers may expose what is buried beneath. Sewing may also be involved in some pieces, to add another level of detail. I am open to using whatever media is most applicable to the piece that I am working on, and continue to explore the boundaries of collage and encaustic.



Given the urbanization of most of the population, I feel that there is a place for art that connects us with nature and our shared human journey. It is my hope that, by expanding our idea of beauty, we can walk more gently on this planet.

Audra Noble was born in Hamilton and has resided in the Toronto area since attending Ryerson University where she received her BAA. She always loved art and started painting when she was seven. Her painting endeavors have continued on and off throughout her life. Twenty years ago Noble started her career in photography when she took courses at Ryerson. Since then she has traveled the world making photographs and continually increasing her sensitivity to its possibilities. She recently started incorporating acrylic and watercolour paintings with her photographs.



Creatively, her intensely coloured images represent the passion and the personal sensuality she experiences in life through her art. The curvatures and colours embody how she feels about her own body and the efforts she makes to keep it healthy and vital. Her black and white works are more evocative and meaningful than most landscape images. They hint strongly of an abstract realm that has organically crumpled or strengthened under the weight of time and nature. Nature and its effects on our world inspire most of her images, whether photographic or mixed media.

A native of Québec, Diana Harding Tucker began life as a classical musician surrounded by a family of painters.



In 1975, she received her BA from Queen's University where she studied Studio Art. In the 1980’s, high in the mountains of California, a fascination with the beauty of her surroundings inspired her to render her interpretations through photography. She studied a Freeman Patterson photography course at Loon Lake, New Brunswick, and colour photography with Ed Burtynsky in Toronto. br>


After a few years of experimentation and self-teaching, and inspired by Picasso Still Life drawings and the softness of Renoir paintings, Diana developed her own unique technique of hand colouring fibre base black and white silver gelatin prints. She has received grants from Ontario Arts Council and Hamilton Arts Council and awards from the Canadian Association of Photographers and Illustrators in Communications (CAPIC) and Applied Arts Magazine.

My initial work of art was executed on the living room wall, in crayon, at the age of three and I have been painting and drawing ever since. From the very beginning I was drawn to the landscape. The interaction of light on the sky, land and water never cease to amaze and challenge me. My paintings are done plein air and in the studio.



I have painted in many places besides Ontario, the American Southwest, the Highlands of Scotland and the primitive beauty of the Queen Charlotte Islands. While primarily an oil painter, I also work in watercolour and acrylic, choosing the material that I feel will best capture the feeling of my subject.



My paintings are in major public, corporate and private collections in Canada, Britain, Japan and the United States.

“My paintings are a return to what is spiritual, an awakening of human feelings, a stirring of visual sensations—and the power of life flowing through us. I try to notice the various states and transformations of my inner self, as I have done through my poetry, hoping that these “notes” will find their way to sensitive viewers. Through colour and shape, light and shadow, I would like to ignite thoughts that evoke emotions and personal reflections.”



Eva Kolacz was born and raised in Poland and is a full time professional painter and printmaker. She incorporates her experiences in theatre and poetry into her paintings. Eva’s career as a painter began with her residency in Canada in 1981.



Her paintings are the vehicles for exploration, depicting ideas and emotions that could come from a phrase of music or a line of poetry. She has participated in many shows in Canada, USA, Japan, and Europe. Her work can be found in both public and private collections across North America.



Eva’s recent work can be seen in the Government of Ontario Art Collection. Currently, Eva lives and works in Oakville, Ontario, and she is represented by the Canvas Gallery in Toronto, Louise Lipman Publishing Inc. in Toronto, and Kurbatoff Art Gallery Ltd. in Vancouver.

Born of Italian parentage in Villenouvelle, France, in 1938, Giuseppe Pivetta begins his artistic training at the École des Beaux Arts in Toulouse. Upon his arrival in Canada in 1957, he enrolls for private lessons at the art studio of Albert Chiarandini who notices an unusual artistic inclination in his newly acquired student. Pivetta is invited to paint ‘en plein air’ with his art teacher.



In the early sixties he attends the evening art classes offered at Central Tech by Telford Fenton for painting and Zimmerman for drawing. He studies with these artists for several years and paints with Chiarandini whenever possible. He attends Chiarandini’s classes at Northern Secondary School and follows in at O.C.A. when Chiarandini is called to teach portrait painting at this institution.



Pivetta’s work may be found in numerous private and corporate collections in Canada, United States, Europe and Asia. In 1987 Sotheby’s of Canada auctioned one piece of his work donated to the ROM Ornithology Gallery for the “Art for the Birds” auction, and in 1988 Wyeth of Canada, a well know pharmaceutical company, featured his work in its yearly calendar.



Pivetta has also taught his artistic methods in workshops and has lectured for the Toronto Separate School Board and other organizations. He has been exhibiting since 1972 in various juried and groups exhibitions.

Kanata artist, John Mlacak is a passionate outdoor oil painter. His work captures both the bold and subtle colours of the Canadian seasons and the vibrant red and green roofs of Québec farm buildings and towns. He is fascinated by the play of light and shade weaving through trees and over the white torrent of rapids and waterfalls.



While John creates large oil canvases of stone terraces, flower-filled gardens, porches and impressionistic scenes of yesteryear, he returns frequently to the grandeur of the Canadian landscape. His en plein air paintings journey through such magnificent locations as Gatineau Park, Rivière Rouge, l'Estire and the Charlevoix area of Québec. Other paintings reflect scenes in Ottawa-Carleton and travel in the Maritimes, New England and Europe. He views his art as an extension of his former interest in design work as an engineer.



John has been painting for over 30 years and is a full-time artist who enjoys a steady demand for his work. His paintings are exhibited in local, Ontario and Québec galleries and he is represented in private and corporate collections in Canada, the United States, Europe, South America, Australia, Korea, Indonesia and Japan.



John has studied with a number of renowned artists. He was influenced by the late Canadian artists Brodie Shearer and Bruce Heggtveit, and greatly admires Canada's own Group of Seven, Tom Thomson and the French Impressionists. John participates in numerous group and solo shows annually and has won many awards for his art in juried exhibitions. John is well respected for his repeated generosity in providing work to a considerable number of charities.



John retired in 1994 after a 35-year career with Bell-Northern Research. For 11 years he was active in local and regional municipal politics in Ottawa. He served a three-year term as a Commissioner on the National Capital Commission and was a member of the Visual Identity Advisory Committee of the Ottawa Transition Board during 2000 when it recommended some of the civic symbols for the new amalgamated City of Ottawa. In addition to his interest in music and politics, John enjoys cycling and photography.

For the past six years, I have been making works that incorporate language, textural surfaces and found objects that can be read as abstract forms of books and letters. Recently these pieces have evolved into new themes, inspired by a collection of war letters, written to my grandmother by soldiers stationed overseas during WW1 and WW2. These letters are both privately meaningful and publicly significant, offering a glimpse of wartime experiences – understated comments of the human condition.



Using a variety of techniques, including paint, drawing, printmaking and stitchery, I assemble mixed media pieces in loosely constructed grid formats. Sometimes, I place a found object in a small niche or box inset into the piece. This object is sometimes the primary source of inspiration, recalling a memory or sensation that prompts the process of discovery and interpretation. Hand-drawn images, lithographs and etchings are often embedded within the surface of the piece. Texture is built up in some areas, while colour is layered over all until the piece takes on an aged patina.



My past work covered a wide terrain, from geological time and natural history to autobiography and emotions. The new pieces are more specific, representing a link between the women at home during the Wars and the men overseas. Letters, parcels, and other ephemera are a part of this history, as are locales. By bringing these components together as new forms of letters, I present a different correspondence for the viewer.



As a woman and an artist who has never experienced war, these letters evoked powerful emotions in me. When I felt compelled to honour the words found in the letters by using them in this new work, I found that viewers were also moved. Martha Gellhorn, the American war correspondent said:



“War is a malignant disease, an idiocy, a prison, and the pain it causes is beyond telling or meaning, but war was our condition and our history, the place we had to live in”.

Ona Alisauskas is an award-winning artist and teacher who lives and works at her Craigleith studio, Northwind. Ona's meticulous waterscapes, landscapes and portraits celebrate life and family.

Residence: Amherst Island,ON.



Education: B.S.A., BaSc.,OCA studies plus separate courses and tutelage in painting and drawing.



Elected to OSA: 2007

A self-taught artist, Bob paints in a representational style and has been painting or involved with art related activities since his teen years. Landscapes, seascapes, faces and figures are his favorite subjects and he continues to spend his time experimenting and studying the craft of painting fine art in an effort to reach an ever elusive goal.



Bob continues to be fascinated by the effects of light on the subjects he chooses to paint. Though realistic in his painting style he seeks the beautiful abstract patterns that he finds in nature. The changing qualities of light and abstract patterns, combined with bold brush work make up Bob’s unique vision of the world.



Many of Bob’s oil and watercolour paintings have been created on locations in various parts of rural Ontario, the Arctic, the Maritimes or other places on his travels outside of Canada. His larger paintings are created in his home studio working from his ‘Plein Air’ studies and reference materials gathered on his journeys.



Bob has exhibited his paintings in many group showings in Toronto and London, Ontario starting in the mid 1960’s. For over 30 years he annually held successful, by invitation only, exhibits in the Markham area. In 1984 he participated in a two-person show held in a restored castle in Stia, Italy, a small town outside of Florence.



After being elected to membership in the prestigious and historic Ontario Society of Artists, Bob exhibited in many of the societies annual juried exhibitions. He was an active member of the OSA in the early 1980’s attaining the position of vice-president.



In 1997, after his watercolour paintings were juried he was invited to join the Canadian Society on Painters in Watercolours. One of the many exhibitions he participated in was the International Watercolour Biennial, held in Mexico City in October 2000. One of his paintings hangs with the societies Diploma Collection in the Art Gallery of Peel, Ontario. He served on the executive committee for a number of years. In 2005, Bob joined with five well-known Canadian artists and established Plein Air Canada, an organization promoting painting out of doors…in the open air. Bob was one of 25 artists, in 2006, which traveled to Canada’s North West Passage to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its discovery. Born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia in 1938 Bob and his wife Mona reside in Thornhill, Ontario.

My first look at the world was in Fredericton, from within a compound cobbled together to house vets returning from WWII. Even from those earliest years, I can recall the Victorian clapboard houses, the planked sidewalks, the fountain and band shell in the nearby park, and the impossibly long train ride to northwest Ontario where we next resided. It was there I spent my pre-school years in a number of small logging towns until my father, a forester, landed work in Smooth Rock Falls (near Kapuskasing). Again, I have clear memories of living in a storey-and-a-half clapboard house whose back yard went all the way to James Bay, of the unrelieved flats of Black Spruce, Black Flies and black muskeg lakes, measured by the intervals of ferociously cold white winters. It was a severe environment that gave rise to a heavy-handed culture, dominated by tough, competitive and anti-social woodsmen, mostly survivors of The Depression and a war, who were determined that their sons be readied to inherit that same world.



A tiny railroad ran through Smooth Rock Falls and I would watch the six-car train disappear into the woods, on its daily run to the CNR junction. I dreamed of hopping on the train and going to Toronto from where it seemed all good things came: the voices on CBC radio, the toys we got at Christmas, the complimentary CNE tickets handed out by our teachers each June… I would eventually end up working in Toronto, but it was as much by accident as intention. I spent most of my high school days in North Bay Ontario, but went to Montreal for my senior year. It was there, in the art room, while flipping through a magazine on Canadian art, that I saw my first Alex Colville image and knew that one day I would understand why it took such a hold of me. I was equally sure that eventually, I would make art that drew from his magic! I spent 4 years in undergrad Fine Arts at Sir George Williams University, and then proceeded to the graduate program in studio art at Concordia. Joining the Anglo exodus from Quebec of the mid ‘70’s, I went to the University of Toronto for my teaching diploma and before the year was over, was hired to teach Art at Upper Canada College in midtown Toronto. I remained there for 28 years, and after becoming the department chair, built a strong program that produced many dozens of artists, designers and architects who practice in many of the world’s major cities. It came at a cost though- I had neither the energy nor the inclination to seriously pursue my own art-planning instead to defer it to a time when I could retire from teaching and give my work complete focus and attention.



My wife and I were scouting out potential retirement towns when at first sight; we fell in love with Port Dalhousie. The village and environs have so many elements that reunite aspects of our pasts, but with a character all its own. And there is a relaxed and open quality to the people, making us immediately feel at home. We especially appreciate how Port Dalhousie retains a structure that people in the first half of the 20th century would recognize. My first major art project there, sought to capture a sense of the generations that have passed through this delightful recreational spot-feeling joy in the hot sun and sand, licking ice cream cones, and listening to the backdrop pulse of waves and wind.

I like to paint subjects that are not normally associated with fine art, such as a cup of coffee or a bottle of beer. To me, these paintings take a moment of our lives telling a story that we can all relate to. The coffee and magazine on the table suggesting an interrupted break; a glass of beer just poured before the game begins. These same themes can also be seen in my abstracts. I will often abstract these same everyday objects, suggesting a chaoticness that is often present in our lives. I once read that if you could not improve on what you wanted to paint you might as well take a photograph. I really believe this. I want to put my own interpretation on the objects. I like to sharpen the contrast between the lights and the darks, or exaggerate colours.



As an artist, I feel that my main goal is to explore my creativity. Although my main medium is pastel, I also use acrylics, collage and recently encaustics to allow myself to see how far I can stretch that creativity, to push myself while thoroughly enjoying the process.