Luminous landscapes at the Library
By Nelson Daily Staff
Landscape comes alive under the brush of Evelyn Kirkaldy, whose luminous oil paintings are currently on display at the Nelson Library.
Many of Kirkaldy’s pieces are created en plein air—on site— the better to harness spontaneity and energetic colour play in portrayals of vibrant mountain meadows, lively flower gardens and lush rainforests.
Her influences include Jackson Pollack as well as a number of Impressionist and Expressionist painters.
As a kid growing up in Toronto, public school art education was not enough for Kirkaldy. Extra-curricular classes included summer drawing and sculpture workshops at Central Technical School.
She later studied art at Three Schools of Art in Toronto and The Banff School of Fine Arts. After graduating with honours from the Ontario College of Art, she moved to western Canada, where she worked as a graphic designer, illustrator, and art director, winning several awards for her work.
An avid hiker, Kirkaldy once spent 10 days in a tree house surrounded by 16 wild grizzly bears. She has explored the west coast of BC and travelled to Alaska in order to ‘walk with grizzlies.’ In Churchill Man., she came face to face with a large polar bear.
“With my paintings I try to capture the essence of the landscape, the feeling of living in nature. A forest is not just trees, it’s a metropolis teeming with wildlife,” she explained.
Her passion for the outdoors has inspired Kirkaldy to work in various media depicting wilderness and its ursine inhabitants. She has also served as artistic advisor to the Get Bear Smart Society based in Whistler since 2000.
The exhibition continues through January.
