Haliburton’s newest contemporary art gallery is set to open its doors for a full 2022 season May 21. Corner Gallery, nestled in Haliburton’s historic Lucas House on Maple Avenue, will rotate through five exhibitions ranging from pop art to hyper-realism to abstracted Canadian landscapes.
Gallery manager Pamela Brohm said she’s excited to provide a space for in-person art-viewing after years of COVID-19 restrictions.
“It’s been an opportunity to bring that back into the light,” she said. Highlands-based painter Rose Pearson will be featured first, bringing a vibrant collection of work including a series of paintings inspired by the 1912 garden manual, The Art and Craft of Garden Making.
“My sister had an old copy of it at her studio, tattered, losing colour, brown with age,” Pearson said.
She found those floral drawings captivating. “There is an element of the organic, but there is something about the deliberate nature of florals,” she said. John Lennard will take over the space June 18.
Lennard’s landscapes mix attention to detail with a nod to the energy of each scene. Whether it’s a stream cascading down Buttermilk Falls or a still early-morning lake vista, Lennard’s work immerses the viewer in Haliburton’s rugged contours.
Charles Pachter will be exhibiting work from his celebrated career starting July 16. He’s a force in the global art world, known for irreverent work such as the 1973 Queen on Moose, a print of which was gifted to the Queen herself.
He’s exhibited globally and been awarded the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilee medals. Byron Hodgins, whose show starts Aug. 13, said he uses the landscapes around him “as a mirror,” finding meaning in the gentle flow of a river or sun-soaked evergreen.
His abstracted landscapes play with shape, light and flicks of colour, crafting landscapes that invite reflection.
Ian Varney will close out the exhibit starting Sept. 10. He has exhibited extensively around Haliburton County and depicts landscapes in acrylic, oil, oil stick and encaustic (pigments mixed with hot wax).
Brohm said she’s “absolutely ecstatic” about the lineup. “The response from the artists has been fantastic,” she said. For more information visit cornergallery.ca.
