Passion for Colour reviewed by Michael Parkin

Passion for Colour, now on at the Foyer Gallery in the Nepean Sportsplex,  has works by 18 of the gallery’s artists, too many to talk about each of them individually.

The show seems almost as much about texture as it is about colour with works ranging from gentle softness to a visual and even physical roughness.

At the soft end of the spectrum, three paintings, one fabric piece and one photograph deserve special mention.   Terry Cowan’s acrylic painting Jack Pine Trail shows a deer by a row of trees in early morning sunlight with fog.  His treatment of light passing through haze is subtle complementing the ov erall muted palette of the work.  Donna Danuta Wiegand’s beautiful oil rendering of Backyardscaptures the feeling and quiet of a winter afternoon – lots of snow with soft bluish shadows offset by the brightness of sunlight on brick.  Newly back from a leave of absence, Jennifer Foster offers up Harbour, Marina di Campo , a scene of workboats lying quai-side.  Her palette is constrained being predominantly blue with a spare use of greens and browns and additional touches of yellow and orange used to good effect.  One final softly textured piece is Sharon Collins’ textile piece called The Pond.  The central portion of this piece creates an impressionistic pond scene in pinks, blues, purples with a touch of yellow.  Additional yellow is supplied by strips fabric appliquéd to appear as rushes giving a strong sense of foreground.  This image is doubly framed, first with patterned fabrics and lastly with a solid boundary of purple strips.  The overall effect is very like a watercolour painting.  Finally in the soft category I want to mention Mario Cerroni’s photograph, Just Another Floral Zoom.  I do not know how much this piece was digitally manipulated but it feels very layered with most of the image softly focused with only the central flower, perhaps a gerbera daisy, having crisp edges.

At the other end of the spectrum are several works that are highly textural visually and sometimes also physically.  Bill Woodley’s photographic grouping of 4 images of Rural France  have the visual roughness of dilapidated stone, wood , brick and tile.  The overall composition is pleasing but the piece would benefit from the use of less reflective glass.   Rob Huntley’s photograph Black-eyed Susans  has been digitally enhanced to Strengthen and boost details in a way that roughens the image without reducing the beauty of the flowers on their background of grasses.  Margaret Chwialkowska’s knife painted On the Road to Oia, Santorini, Greece and Ray Piesina’s very energetic  Tribal Uprising achieve strong textural effects by the methods each uses in applying paint to canvas while Elisabeth Arbuckle’s mixed media piece Gold Leaf uses the application of both paper and sand onto the surface of the painting to create a physical as well as a visual texture.

There are a number of other impressive works in this show, Dhanashri Bapat’s watercolours, Erika Farkas’  combining of photograph with acrylic paint, Ginny Forbert’s very painterly photo manipulation, Luminita Serbanescu’s crows, Beata Jakubek and Jess Fleury’s paintings of skaters on the Rideau Canal, Yves Jardon’s photographs and Eiko Emori’s glass sculptures all deserve more discussion and comment than they are receiving here so come on out to the Foyer Gallery to see these wonderful works for yourself.