Girard Portfolio: Show at the Pontiac: Stone School Gallery, Portage-du-Fort

Thursday, July 31, 2014

Show at the Pontiac: Stone School Gallery, Portage-du-Fort

While working in Nunavik, northern Quebec in a small Cree village, I decided to respond to a call for artists to assemble a show at Stone School Gallery in Portage-du-Fort, Quebec. I am pleased to tell you all that the show is now in progress and is titled 'Disguised Fragility'. I am most grateful to the gallery team at the Pontiac Art Association for their support in getting this show underway.
The opening was July 18 and it will progress until Sunday, August 10, 2014. The gallery is open from 11-4p.m. or by appointment. Please call me at 613 315 2753 to arrange this.
You will see a collection of taiga landscapes that are at once desolate but yet rich in expansiveness. There are watercolours of sunsets of Hudson's Bay, large shimmering Canadian shield rock faces and stunted, weathered black spruce. See encaustics that are responses to many of the watercolours but have their own richer earthy textural surfaces.
On Sunday, August 10 at 2 p.m., I will conduct an Artist's Talk describing the techniques I use in the encaustic process. I invite you to come and, at that time, see the final day of Disguised Fragility.
Linda Girard

Autumn Colours, Caribou Moss
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Biography

My childhood has been delineated by my marauding father who joined the Forces to have us uprooted from place to place: stationed in Picton, Prince Edward County, Petawawa, the Rhone Valley, Germany, and Edmonton. Finally I concluded my high school days in Timmins, Ontario, my birthplace.

I graduated from Queen’s in Kingston in 1974 with a minor in art history and history followed by a teaching degree in secondary visual arts education the following year, 1975. At Queen's, I was instructed by Jennifer Dickson, Trevor Hodgson and Allen Dickinson. In 1975, I began exploring painting with wax using the traditional Javanese tjanting needles on textile and exhibited in a student show.

In the early years in my education career, I travelled to northern Ontario to the James Bay region and worked as an arts & crafts co-ordinator. I learned more from them at that point than they me.

In the late seventies, I saw the work of Joyce Devlin in North Gower and was observant of her exquisite portraits and layers of acrylic paint.

I left teaching and travelled to work as an artist in Montreal. There I handmade folk clothing and accessories using the wax resist techniques on natural fibres I had learned years earlier.

In Ste. Rose north of Montreal island I began my family and in 1980 Emilie was born. Soon in 1982 Camille followed and I returned with my husband to Ottawa and gave birth to Andrea in 1983. In the 1980’s I returned to the teaching profession and was employed with the Ottawa Carleton Catholic School Board for 13 years working solely at St. Mark’s in Manotick.

In the early 1990’s I moved to Kemptville and began working with watercolour being attracted to its fluid line and challenging techniques. I was introduced to an academic method of watercolour by the artist, Jaw Shaw then in Oxford Mills. Her knowledge and careful manipulations still impress me and have influenced my work. I exhibited with her and a group of artists in Oxford Mills at the stackwall building next to the dam. I also exhibited with the North Grenville Art Guild at this time, showing a series of watercolours of historic buildings in the area. I worked behind the scenes in set design with the Kemptville Players and later became part of the leadership team of the Dandelion Festival, North Grenville. In the late 1990’s I taught Visual Arts Education in the Education Faculty of the University of Ottawa as a part-time professor to 2003. I transferred in 2000 to teach at St. Michael’s Catholic High School and retired from formal education in June 2010.

Presently I am exploring the medium of encaustic painting soon becoming a new series. I hope you enjoy these blogs as a new series comes to completion.

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Thursday, July 31, 2014

Show at the Pontiac: Stone School Gallery, Portage-du-Fort

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