Tay Gallery Kanata

Heat of the Moment: The Artists

Thursday, August 4th, 2011

We are pleased to welcome a number of guest artists  to the summer show, Heat of the Moment at Tay Gallery Kanata

Lorena Ziraldo, Ottawa area artist, is a graduate of the Fine Arts Program at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Her fluid and exquisite figurative brushwork is surrounded by contemplative and sophisticated abstract colour schemes. The narrative quality that emerges in many of her paintings is made all the more compelling by her control of her medium. Emotion is a key element  in her paintings as are the more formal qualities of colour,  light,space, and composition. Lorena’s work can be found in notable galleries across Canada .

Brigitte Nowak lives in Toronto and spends summers on an island in Georgian Bay. Her paintings in oils and in egg tempera explore the nature of reality and illusion, the interaction between the human and natural worlds and the line between observation and comment.  She has won awards in both Canada and the U.S., and her work is in private and corporate collections. She is represented by several galleries in Ontario, including the Red Canoe Gallery in Muskoka, Haliburton’s Ethel Curry Gallery and Latitude 44 in Toronto.

Susan  Jillette, of Rigaud Quebec is an elected member of Society of Canadian Artists (SCA), the International Guild of Realism (IGOR) and the Autour de Nous (ADN) group of local professional artists and presently serves on the board of Directors for the SCA. Presently she works with acrylics and is working on a new series of textured and colourful paintings in the fantasy realm. Most of her work can be described as bright and whimsical.

Gilda Pontbriand, Ottawa area artist  shows  paintings  in acrylic and mixed media from her series Ancient Symbols. The symbols from the Mayan culture portray the inter-relationship between man and universe, the eternal and the  fleeting, the real and the intangible, and natural and supernatural. Gilda has exhibited in over 100 solo and group shows in Canada, Japan, Korea, Mexico and the United States.

Jennifer Foster’s drawings and paintings are an appreciation of the everyday world. Portraits are a particular passion because of the opportunity they offer to capture seemingly conflicting elements: a portrait needs to be accurate and yet expressive; representational but also perceptive and open to what lies below the surface. Her work has been shown  in the Red Trillium Studio Tour, Toronto’s historic Distillery District, the Varley Gallery ,  the John B. Aird Gallery , and Cumberland Gallery in Ottawa.

Brian Kelly, Kanata area artist has been painting landscapes for 35 years. He is inspired by the colours of nature in all seasons . He shows paintings of  summer wildflowers in their natural environment in this exhibition. He has exhibited his oils , pastels and limited lithographs at Canadian and international art festivals and in commercial galleries in Ontario.

Anna Krak-Kepka is a full-time Visual Artist and Art Educator living in Brockville Ontario. She is primarily known for her talent with color: her paintings are full of enchantment of the world of dream and magic. Her art is a biographical exploration of her life. Extensive travel to Europe, Africa, Mexico and California are among the bedrock influences in her artistic life.

Michel Luc Bellemare ‘s  abstract paintings are  an exploration of the influence of colour on the psyche and are recognizable for their  thickly textured and glittering surface of  oil impasto,  which appear as  ”jewels for the wall”.  Bellemare has abstract work  in the National Gallery collection and  recently a work was added to the collection at the Art  Gallery of Ontario. He has published a book on the philosophy of colour, titled Colour- Realism.

Elaine Archambault has participated in many group exhibitions since 1985 in Quebec and Ontario where she is represented by Gallery Marchant in Lancaster and The Abbey in Glen Nevis. Annual visits to the sea have inspired many seaside landscapes animated by people on vacation. Trips across Canada, plein air painting in France , workshops in Charlevoix and her  flower garden at home  all  provide great inspirations for sketches and paintings.

Also featured in the summer show with  exemplary works  are gallery artists Charles Spratt, John Alexander Day, Tricia Savoie, Martha Markowsky, John Stevenson, Michel Pleau,  Larry Deacon , Stephen Rothwell , Elizabeth Elkin, Marianna Mikhaylyan, Anne Barkley, J. Allison Robichaud and John Mlacak.  Biographical information about the artists can be found on the artist pages on this website.