“I have been focusing on Paradise and its history for 25 years. Having concentrated on this subject for that amount of time has allowed me to always be connected to my childhood home. The pieces are always approached by the memory of them and as I bring my notes back to my studio I recall the light, the time, the place, my history and the history of the land itself. I paint on board using the stained surface as ground and glazes and varnishes to denote time passed,” Janice Leonard.
Janice Leonard received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1981 and has been represented by Studio 21 Fine Art since the late 1980’s. In 2016, a selection of Leonard’s paintings were included in “Terroir, A Nova Scotia Survey” at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Her work is held in the collections of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Canada Art Bank, Telstat Canada, Ottawa, Nova Scotia Art Bank, Dalhousie Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia as well as many corporate and private collections, across Canada and internationally. One of her paintings now hangs in the Nova Scotia Room at Canada House, London.
A client of ours was in the gallery recently and chose a couple of interesting small artworks to buy. She told us that her architect brother had once instructed her that she should never have two things side-by-side. It is the conventional wisdom that it is preferable to hang odd numbers of artworks together, rather…
Read MoreJanice Leonard’s piece, Explosion School Girls, uses found glass to represent the great destruction. Artworks in a variety of media are popping up all over the city commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion. The Studio 21 art gallery is marking the tragic anniversary with an exhibition of new work by four of their…
Read MoreNew works by gallery founder Ineke Graham and longtime gallery artist Janice Leonard are the subject of the next exhibition at Studio 21, running from March 31 through to April 26, 2017. Ineke’s show Still Lifes and Lifes Re-Lived focuses on her Halifax studio and its layers of memory. Leonard’s Annapolis, Subd. B: postcards from…
Read MoreStephen Hutchings has an unusual technique of charcoal and oil for his monumental South Shore Nova Scotia landscapes. The technique softens and fades an image, giving it a dreamy, otherworldly quality. These paintings are technically amazing in capturing, for example, a sky pattern and light reflecting in still water by a marsh or a curving…
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