From February 3, 2012 to March 16, 2012

Julia Van Dine "Under The Sea" Mixed Media

Carol Touzin "Destiny" Mixed Media

Iris Shields "Tunnel 96" Mixed Media

Jeanine Vegoard "By the Sea" Mixed Media

Laura Landers "Condensed Season #1" Mixed Media

Walter Pape "Serenade" Mixed Media

From December 16, 2011 to January 27, 2012

The 55th annual juried exhibition of the Northern Ontario Art Asociation features 40 works from across Northern Ontario. Don't miss this valuable yearly survey of our great northern artists and their superb northern art.

Diane Green "Temiskaming Sentinels" Pastel

Judy Menderson "Hunting Season" Oil

Shirley Howard "Light on the Trail" Watercolour

Alice Y. Seguin Sawicki "Special Place - Reflect" Watercolour

Jan Browning "Hitchen Hill Farm" Acrylic

From November 4, 2011
to December 9, 2011

Keith Campbell’s creative ceramic work takes a sometimes humorous and always thoughtful look at Canadian History.

While pushing the medium of ceramics to its absolute limits Keith Campbell has brought to the gallery a captivating portrait of ourselves.

This show documents where we have been as a nation and offers a wry commentary on where we are headed.

"Alexander Wood: Gay Pioneer" 2010 Porcelain"Red and White" 2010 Porcelain"Assassination of D'Arcy McGee" 2010 Porcelain

From September 23, 2011

to October 28, 2012

Brigitte Bere makes paintings and ceramic works that explore the situation of women in our society.

It is rare to find some one who is gifted in both painting and ceramic works and who has such a command of colour that permeates both mediums.

African Sculpture 2011 Ceramic Two Figures 2011 Ceramic"Beltane - Celtic rite of Passage" 2011 Acrylic on Canvas

"Night Works" Paintings by Michael Dobson

From August 12 to September 16, 2011

Michael Dobson's paintings exist in the mysterious and magical world of darkness that the night brings. Setting forth to paint long after the sun has set he paints scenes he can only dimly see with paint he cannot see the colour of.

When he returns with a painting to examine it under the light he is always surprised. 

He wants to be surprised. In a recent interview Michael was asked if he visualizes a painting in his mind before he begins to work. Without hesitation he replied "No. If I could see the finished product in my mind I wouldn't bother painting it. It's the act of doing it, not the planning and doing it that I enjoy.

The paintings of Michael Dobson represent an important and very beautiful contribution to the long and rich tradition of Canadian landscape painting.

" A Quiet Summer Evening" Oil on Masonite

"First Star Over Quebec City" Oil On Masonite 

"Petty Harbour, Newfoundland" Monotype on Paper"Lion's Gate Bridge" Watercolour on Paper"Smithville, Rainy Evening" Watercolour on paper"Welland River" Watercolour on Paper"Austin Sawmill" Monotype on Paper

Floral Inspiration: TAG Permanent Collection

Floral Inspiration features thirty paintings selected from the Permanent Collection.  This year our annual Garden Tour is being held in conjunction with this show. The Temiskaming Art  Gallery has approached local florists and nurseries inviting them to design floral arrangements inspired by a painting of their choice from this exhibition. On Wednesday July the 12th beautiful floral arrangements inspired by the permanent collection will be featured in the Temiskaming Art Gallery. 

  Betty Macauley, Summer Lemonade, Acrylic

Bert Weir, Wave Series, Oil on Canvas

Joan Schwegler, Welcome to My World, watercolour and Guache on Paper

Walter Pape, Storm Rising, Watercolour

From March 25, 2011 to May 6, 2011

Sutton, Ontario based professional photographer Peter Sibbald has watched with growing concern as the countryside that he grew up with has been permanently altered for massive housing developments that have spread and continue spreading north of Toronto.

The photographs in this show document these changes and some of their less known but very important and disturbing consequences. First Nations heritage and the memory of early European agricultural settlers is swept away forever to accommodate expansion that is relentlessly uniform and essentially ahistorical as well as profoundly unsustainable.

Caledonia, Ontario. Six Nations Mohawk Protest/ Haudenosaunee Land Reclamation Site

Approximately 43° 3'19.09"N 79°58'8.98"W, N of 6th Line, W off Argyle St., facing Northwest, April 20, 2006 on the outskirts of Caledonia.

On February 28, 2006, a small group of protesters from the Six Nations moved onto this 40- hectare construction site then known as Douglas Creek Estates, to reclaim the land. Nearly two months later, with the Ipperwash Inquiry into the fatal shooting of Kettle Point First Nations member Dudley George fully underway nearby, in the early hours of this day, a bungled Ontario Provincial Police raid resulted in 16 arrests and injuries to some Six Nations’ people. This sparked wide-spread outrage amongst Aboriginal people around North America, many whom would flood in from distant communities to support the Haudenosaunee.

In their retaliation, including the burning of a wooden bridge (viewed in this photograph) by people variously described as illegal Native protesters and terrorists versus Aboriginal land reclamation occupants and guardians of a sacred trust, hundreds more supporters moved to the site. By midnight these events reunited the Haudenosaunee Peoples of the Six Nations in the Grand River Territory, which for 82 years, like so many other societies of First Peoples throughout Canada, had been effectively divided and conquered by Canada’s Indian Act.

Under the version of the Indian Act that was in force by 1924, the Government of Canada jailed the hereditary council of the Haudenosaunee Peoples that was the natural, indigenous government of those people. Canada then replaced the traditional council with a federally mandated band council, arbitrarily placing power in the hands of some families on the reserve, while stripping it from those whom had traditionally held it. This effectively ensured that for the next 82 years the communities of the Six Nations in the Grand River Territory reserve would remain politically divided, fractious and at times, and more than somewhat dysfunctional. Provincial and federal governments refused to recognize the legitimacy of the traditional council—that meanwhile continued in matrilineal longhouse clans and warrior societies.

It is arguable that on this very day a new template for Aboriginal/Non-Aboriginal negotiation was minted.

Markham, Ontario. Real Estate Billboards: Sensational Singles

Approximately 43°54'7.53"N 79°14'27.90"W, facing south, circa May 5, 2005

Before Europeans arrived, these lands were rich in freshwater and wildlife, and home to successive waves of First Peoples who saw themselves and the land as one. Later, early settlers discovered that because of an excellent combination of soil quality, water availability and growing season—determined in part by latitude and proximity to the moderating influence of Lake Ontario—that these lands could be turned into productive, Class 1 (best quality) farmland that was to help feed the growing city it surrounded for more than a century and a half.

On the former pioneer family farm of John Raymer, real estate billboards promote the sale of roughly 2,500 homes in a new development being built on this and neighbouring lands. An official document filed in 2005, by pro-development politicians in York Region who were seeking funds from the Province to bolster health services in the region, states “the GTA/905

Regions of York, Halton, Peel and Durham have been and will continue to be the fastest growing regions in Ontario, collectively growing at twice the provincial rate of growth by adding more than 90,000 new residents each year.”

This is true as is the fact that in a time of increasing global economic uncertainty and unstable fuel prices, with less productive land to economically ensure our own food security we are ever more dependent on food imported from the USA, Latin America and Asia.

Stouffville, Ontario. Dewatering

Approximately 43°56'57.22"N 79°15'7.87"W, facing East, circa October 2, 2005

As part of the extension of York Region’s $350 million mega-project known as the “Big Pipe,” the site of a large, trunk-line sewer passes through land along the 9th Line in front of this 19th century farmhouse. The land must be dewatered in order that workers can get deep into the ground, at or below the water table, to install the sewer. This trunk of the pipe is to accommodate growth in Stouffville’s Secondary Plan by moving sewage to the Duffin Creek Water Pollution Control Plant near Lake Ontario. Rates of dewatering range from 5,000 to 30,000 litres per minute, and the project stretches well into the Oak Ridge’s Moraine, the natural water source for all lands descending southward to Lake Ontario.

Broad media coverage indicates that this process is highly controversial. It is reported that opponents, from the province’s Environment Commissioner right on down to farmers and individual property owners, argue (and officials readily admit) that the dewatering process has proven to empty aquifers, parch wells, bleed streams and fields dry, destroy fish and wildlife habitats, and can draw effluent away from failing septic tanks out into what remains of the broader water table. Proponents argue that they will be able to set things right later by implementing mitigating measures.

Such mitigating measures are planned on the assumption that they may yet be invented and successfully implemented. Leading thinkers, for example Al Gore, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Jared Diamond and David Suzuki, all warn decision makers that the natural world is not a simple, predictable machine. Rather it is a complex interconnected system that remains beyond modern comprehension. The default model for decision making, they say, should be the “Precautionary Principle” which insists that in order for the overall capacity of environmental systems to act as a buffer for human well-being, these environmental systems must be adequately protected: any error in risk calculation should be to the advantage of the environment. Adopting this principle not only permits action to be taken in the absence of conclusive scientific evidence of cause and effect relationships, but stresses that action in anticipation of harm is essential to ensure that it does not occur. We can never reach absolute certainty or obtain absolute proof of cause and effect in complex systems. It is therefore more important, more prudent and more urgent to appreciate our scientific limitations, in order to foresee and forestall catastrophe.

The Temiskaming Palette and Brush Club Annual Show 2011

February 4, 2011 to March 18, 2011

Have you ever seen artists repeatedly squinting as they gaze at an outdoor scene they are painting? It may appear that many artists would benefit from a trip to the optometrist and although this may be true in a few cases there is another explanation. When you squint it limits the amount of light and detail that you see and it is much easier to judge the various shades of black and white or what artists call the value of a particular scene. Artists routinely do black and white renderings of a picture that are known as value studies.In past annual shows of the Palette and Brush Club the focus has been on various colours and it was decided by the club that the focus of the annual show would be value, the rendering of a scene in black and white. Come to the show to view and enjoy the exceptional value studies done by our talented local artists.

Margaret Youngs "Fox Run Road, Temagami" 2011 Ink, Conte and Charcoal on Canvas 24" x 18"  Walter Pape "Floral Abundance" 2011 Lino Print On Paper 23" x 18" Maureen Steward "Maisie and Belle" 2011 Etching On Paper 21.5" x 21.5" Eleanor huff "West Brook Pond, Newfoundland" 2011 Sumi Ink On Oriental Paper 20.25" x 17.25" Anne Denise Mejaki "Starry Eyed" 2011 Ink wash On Paper 21.75" x 22.75"