Education

Sundays in the Studio

Sunday, July 23, 2017 | 1 pm – 4 pm

Join us for family time and be engaged in creative studio activities led by local artists. Presented with the support of Anne Safranyos & family, we are pleased to offer Sundays in the Studio for a returning 5th year.

Come and join us in the studio each Sunday for the month of July, Artist Leigh Archibald's creative projects will coincide with ideas surrounding food culture and pop art

Sundays in the Studio - July 2017

Artist: Leigh Archibald

Leigh Archibald is an award winning, mixed media artist working in encaustic painting, printmaking and bookmaking. Leigh studied Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal and continued her education in plastic arts with courses in Sorranno, Italy, at the Ottawa School of Art, and other master artist workshops.

Leigh's work can be found in private collections in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa and has participated regularly since 2007 in juried group and solo shows in Canada and abroad.

Artist Statement:

Leigh Archibald is a mixed media encaustic artist and printmaker. Her work examines the impact of cultures upon each other through the layering of images into pigmented wax.

Strong ties to the land and its creatures inform all cultures but industrialization, techicalization and, most recently, virtualization have diluted this until it is almost invisible in modern urban environments. In aboriginal cultures alliances with animals, plants and ancestors continue to be understood as empowering, connecting people to the worlds of the cosmos and conferring the knowledge and powers necessary for healing, transforming and successful passage through life. I use the marks of woodcuts, linocuts, drawing, and photography to express the strength and mystery of this connection and its potential for the reaffirmation of the human in urban settings.

My interest in human stories, in the interaction of cultures and the impact of advanced technologies on indigenous peoples is reflected in my work. I use the layering of images, colours and marks to represent the ephemerality of humanity in time. My encaustic work takes advantage of the transparent and reflective qualities of the wax and the stop time capacity of the camera to capture single moments underlaid by the layers of previous lives and interactions with the world. This is represented in various ways, an image of a single person, multiple images and symbols juxtaposed to highlight similarity in difference. Many of the paintings are accompanied by stories of how they were developed; the encounters behind the images.

In terms of technique I use a variety of media and found objects including sand, porcupine quills, rusted paper, newspaper, cloth and more. I often start with photographic images I have taken, work with and manipulate the images, transforming real into symbols, then embedding them in the encaustic surface. This is layered with pigmented and clear encaustic and other materials; scratched into, drawn and painted on to create a rich, textured environment referencing the multiplicity and disappearance of cultures as they are absorbed into the urban landscape.

FREE with $10 Gallery admission (Free admission for AGW members, children under 12 and Indian Status and Métis Card Holders).

Event Details

Registration Contact

Jessica Cook