By Eric Bourque
THE VANGUARD
NovaNewsNow.com
For the next three months – officially starting Nov. 24 – the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Yarmouth will play host to an exhibit featuring works by life members of the Yarmouth Art Society.
An opening reception for the show is scheduled for this Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. and the exhibit is scheduled to run until Feb. 17.
Visitors to the gallery during this time period will get to view paintings by Lois Allen, Alva Bain, Margaret Chipman, Barbara Doucette, Hugh Eamon, Alex Gigeroff, Louise Mullen, Ruth Rideout and Thaya Whitten.
“These are all people who have contributed significantly to the art society,” said Virginia Stoddard, president of the Yarmouth Art Society.
The show probably will consist of 35 to 40 paintings altogether, she said.
“Some are big paintings, some are little,” she said. “Depending on the space and how things look, there will be an average of (about) four paintings per artist.”
This is the first exhibit for the art society to focus exclusively in this way on the society’s life members.
“We’ve had group shows,” Stoddard said, “but never a show that honours the nine people who are life members.”
Cynthia Smith – whose mother, the late Barbara Doucette, is one of those whose work will be part of the exhibit – says she is proud her mom’s paintings will be on display.
“I think it’s quite an honour,” Smith said. “I wish she was still around.”
Smith says her mother, who died in 2010 at 90 years of age, painted for many years and had other interests in the area of arts and crafts, including sewing, knitting and rug-hooking.
“She was always doing something (creative),” Smith said.
As for the art society’s life members show, Stoddard says Saturday’s opening reception will be a chance for members of the public to meet some of the people behind the artwork.
“Some of the artists, of course, have passed on, but, of the living artists, I think they’re all going to be here,” she said.
