Pablo Picasso said “every child is an artist; the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.”
Guelph is literally teeming with people who managed to stay artists after they grew up and for many, if not all, the process has been the best part of the journey.
There is an artist in the city for nearly every medium you could imagine and 41 of them will be opening their doors to the public this weekend during the Guelph Studio Tour 2019.
The Studio Tour takes place Saturday and Sunday. A tour map and information on other artists can be found at www.guelphstudiotour.ca.
Oxanna Adams: abstract oil painting
Abstract painter Oxanna Adams is a member of the Studio Tour publicity committee and has also been preparing her own studio at 22 Maple Street for visitors.
“This is my second year in the tour,” said Adams. “Part of being a member is that everybody pitches in because we are a voluntary organisation of artists and it’s us who are putting it on and making it work.”
Adams was born in Toronto and grew up in Grey County where she developed a love for the natural world.
She is a certified accountant and worked for a number of years on Bay Street. She moved with her husband from Mississauga to Guelph 25 years ago to get a little closer to nature, which is a recurring theme in her art.
“I think you tend to pick up on your creative side what you are passionate about,” she said. “I have always been an outdoor person. One of the reasons I hated what I was doing is I couldn’t stand all the concrete and buildings”
Adams’ began painting with water colours and experimented for a while with acrylics until she met Janice Mason Steeves, an abstract painter from Rockwood.
“We were volunteering at the same event and we got talking,” said Adams. “She had just started using oil and cold-wax medium and had transitioned to abstract. She invited me to a workshop she was teaching and that was it.”
Adam’s transition to abstract oil and cold-wax medium on wood panel was a natural progression.
“I have never painted 100 per cent realism or representational. it’s my interpretation,” said Adams. “I think it was a gradual transition into more and more abstraction.”
The Studio Tour follows two other exhibits of Adams’ work this year.
“I had the show at Silence, called North with my friend Barbara Shaw and I had the show with Dennis Gaumond at the Red Brick Café,” she said. “So, yes, it has been a very busy year.”
Goldie Sherman: clay and mixed media
Clay and mixed media artist Goldie Sherman is a good example of the cooperative and collaborative spirit of Guelph’s artistic community having shared studio space and galleries with a number of well-established artists in the city since she moved here in 1981.
She was one of the original members of the Guelph Studio Tour and has her latest studio in a renovated barn behind the home and studio of fellow artist Eve Geisler at 244 Liverpool St.
Sherman got her start in the arts during the late 1960s under the tutelage of her uncle, a radical socialist painter, and her aunt, a photographer who invited her to live with them in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, when she was 16.
“They didn’t have children so they said come to San Miguel and they exposed me to the arts,” said Sherman. “I was born by chance into this family of art and music with an adventurous spirit and a keen desire to create.”
Sherman expresses herself musically as a trained drummer and dancer but has made her living with her hands in clay.
“It’s mostly clay but I am branching out into painting and mixed media,” she said. “I made my livelihood from the clay as a production potter but I never stuck to the same style. I am 67 now and I have had many incarnations. I just follow my passionate impulse and I am so grateful to this community. I have felt supported and I am a collaborator. I really feel what we can do together we can’t do by ourselves.”
Eric Allen Montgomery: mixed media assemblage
It is the second year on the tour for mixed media assemblage artist Eric Allen Montgomery who will be welcoming people to his studio at 47 Armstrong Ave.
He was born in Toronto, raised in St. Catharine’s and spent 17 years in BC running a glass studio before moving to Guelph in 2008.
Montgomery studied graphic arts at Fanshawe College but most of his training was through apprenticeships.
“I did a jewelry apprenticeship when I was 21 and another with a potter when I was 30,” he said. “I also did a year at George Brown in their jewelry program.”
His experience working with precious metals and gems informs his art of assembling what many might consider junk.
“I like to say I tell stories with stuff,” he said. “I combine a bit of photography and paint effects, but it is essentially three-dimensional collage with found materials. I literally pick things off the road or dumpster dive. I go to flea markets and garage sales and shops like Dis-A-Ray downtown. I like the old worn and rusty pieces that have what I call the patina of life. That makes it interesting because you can tell they have been in people’s lives in different ways.”
Montgomery does his part assembling and promoting exhibits of other local artists as well.
“The 41 artists in this tour are just a drop in the bucket,” he said. “I do quarterly themed open call out group shows at the eBar. The show I have going on right now has 64 artists and 163 pieces in just this one group show. That’s a big one for me.”
Dawn Anderson Vaughan: pastel
This is the first year in the Guelph Studio Tour for pastel, realist artist Dawn Anderson Vaughan. The walls of her studio at 107 Alma St. S. are covered with vivid images she has captured from photographs she has taken from around the world.
“I take a lot of photographs when I am out and about and, occasionally I come across a shot with the right composition and lighting that will make a great painting,” she said. “It’s bringing something to life at a moment and capturing that feeling where I am. That market scene there was in Croatia and the energy, the light and everything – you’re just feeling it all. It’s just being able to bring that out in a painting.”
Vaughan was born in Sarnia and moved to Guelph in 2006 where she lives with her husband and two children. She studied interior design at Humber college and worked for a number of years as the interior designer for McMaster Children’s Hospital.
She has always had a passion for art but has become more focused over the past three years.
“It is something I did as a kid and I studied interior design and all of that kind of goes together but art wasn’t encouraged as much as a career when you’re young,” she said. ”Just having art come back into my life more is exciting.”
She has sold her work at Art in the Street, has been featured in some juried shows and has been growing her contacts in the art community. She recently completed a workshop with another Guelph artist on the tour Jessica Masters.
“I love her work and she is just down the street,” said Vaughan. “It is a real honour to be a part of Studio Tours because I used to check it out when I first moved here.”
She is still experimenting with her medium.
“I did do acrylic and just fell in love with pastel and the way that the pigments come together – the different tones you can get and contrast,” she said. “I think sometimes for an artist it’s when that medium feels right and I am still learning so I plan to keep exploring.”
Dennis Gaumond: acrylic paint and tissue on canvas.
Abstract painter and musician, Dennis Gaumond, has developed a distinctive style using acrylic paint and tissue on canvas.
“I went through a lot of casting around for a style I could sink my teeth into in the abstract world and made a lot of crappy paintings in the process,” he said. “Then I discovered this technique and it really grabbed me.”
He compares the process to playing improvisational blues.
“I like leaving part of the painting up to chance or circumstance,” he said. “It’s a partnership with chance rather than me directing everything. The accidents are often the most enjoyable part. It’s like when you are jamming and improvising and you make a mistake. If you take that mistake and play it four times, all of a sudden, you’ve made a statement.”
Gaumond was born in Sudbury and travelled around Ontario before moving to Vancouver where he spent a couple of years as a commercial fisherman.
“I had the misguided idea that I could make my money and support my blues habit by fishing, but it was just so brutal on my hands,” he said. “I lost feeling in these four knuckles and you can’t play guitar very well when you do that so I packed in that idea.”
He moved to Guelph in 1986 when his wife got a job teaching here. Their home at 8 Chelsea Ct. is where he creates and displays his art.
He chose abstract painting over realism because it allows for more interpretation.
“It’s a dialogue between the artist and the observer,” he said. “I like that idea that I’m not giving them all the answers and they can come up with their own interpretations. That’s the way it should be I figure.”
He splits his time between playing music and making art and approaches both much the same way.
“I lot of people are focused on the product and not the process but for me and a lot of artists the process is critical,” he said. “If it’s not bringing me joy and raising my vibrations to do the painting then I don’t want to do it.”
Holly Atkinson: sculptor bronze, mixed media and hydrostone
Sculptor Holly Atkinson discovered her love of art as a child and did a lot of creating and exploring before finding her passion in one of the oldest and most enduring artistic mediums.
“I always entered competitions in drawing and I always made things with my hands,” she said. “Probably most artists would say that. That was always part of my life and it was just a matter of finding the right medium for me that I like and had a passion for. Sculpture kind of seemed to be it.”
She was born and raised in Orillia and after high school enrolled in an arts program that split her time between the University of Toronto and Sheridan College
“So, it was half time at the university and the college,” she said. “I got my degree in art education and had an option to take another year at teacher’s college but I didn’t do that.”
She chose instead to do some traveling and get some work experience.
“I was a mural artist in Toronto and I went to Calgary and worked there as a graphic artist for about three years,” she said. ”I moved to Paris, France, and did some freelancing there for a couple years then I came back and moved to Mississauga and started at a foundry there. That’s how I got into bronze casting”
She spent the next 31 years at Artcast foundry learning and mastering the art of bronze casting.
“Artcast has been in business for over 50 years,” she said. “They get a lot of artists’ work and many government pieces as well. The first big job I worked on was of Diefenbaker that’s on display in Ottawa. They do a lot of big monuments.”
Throughout that time she created and maintained her own studio.
“I was still doing my studio stuff on the side which is a little difficult when you are working but I still had that ongoing presence,” she said. “I was at the Williams Mill (Creative Arts Studio) for six or seven years in Glen Williams.”
Atkinson retired from Artcast three years ago and moved to Guelph where she now pursues her passion working in bronze and winter stone full time.
“You think about it night and day,” she said. “Ask any artist and they will have a sketch book full of ideas for their next project. It’s a good and a bad thing because at two in the morning you’re awake thinking about art."
She will be exhibiting her work during the Guelph Studio Tour with seven other artists in Dublin Street Church at 68 Suffolk St West.
