The Sunshine Coast s Centre is a non-profit gallery (run by the Sunshine Coast s Council) which hosts up to 15 local and out-of-town exhibitions each year. The exhibitions and schedule are determined a year in advance by the Visual s Advisory Committee, comprised of volunteers with a wide range of visual knowledge and experience. The Committee Members are appointed by the curator and is independent of the Board of Directors.

June 18 - July 6 2008 ~ National Aboriginal Day Exhibition
May 28 - June 15 2008 ~ Kathleen Barrett & Maurice Spira
May 14 - 24 2008 ~ SC Arts Council Art Auction
Apr 30 - May 11 2008 ~ Young People's Own Show - Elementary
Mar 12 - Apr 13 2008 ~ Young People's Own Show - High School
Feb 13 - Mar 9 2008 ~ CANSCAIP
Jan 9 - Feb 10 2008 ~ Friends of the Gallery
Nov 21 - Dec 22 2007 ~ Judy Ross & Barry Goodman
Oct 31 - Nov 18 2007 ~ Young Peoples' Banner Project
Sept 26 - Oct 28 2007 ~ Royden Josephson / Ed Varney
Aug 21 - Sept 23 2007 ~ Marilyn Marshall / Susan Furze / Jan Poynter
July 10 - Aug 19 2007 ~ Annual Summer Invitational
May 30 - July 8 2007 ~ Jone Pane / Jana Curll
May 9 - May 26 2007 ~ Life and Limb Group
April 18 - May 6 2007 ~ Young Peoples Own Show Elementary
March 28 - April 15 2007 ~ Young Peoples' Own Show High School
February 21 - March 25 18 2007 ~ Heather Conn / Florence Debeugny
January 10 - February 18 2007 ~ Friends of the Gallery
November 29 - December 22 2006 ~ Dean Schutz / Kevin McEvoy

back to current shows

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June 18 - July 6 2008
reception Wednesday, June 18, 7:00 - 9:00pm

First Annual National Aboriginal Day Exhibition -

The First Annual National Aboriginal Day show will feature contimporary weavings, paintings, fashion design and sculpture by up and coming Sechelt and other First Nations artists. Traditional works will be part of the exhibition.
Curator: Dionne Paul

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May 28 - June 15 2008
reception Wednesday, May 28, 7:00 - 9:00pm

Maurice Spira - Landscapes

Working 'out of doors' in the mid-seventies in Vancouver, up and down the waterfront, Maurice resumed the practice in 2005, with a couple of friends, initiating a summer program of landscape painting depicting local industries as they appear situated in our coastal landscape. Unlike most contemporary artists dependent on photographic reference for their work, these canvases were created 'out of doors' (en plein air) directly on site, in a single session. While landscape work only represents about a quarter of my production overall, I consider it to be of crucial importance, since it involves a direct, living relationship with nature, demands basic classical skills, flexibility and a considerable degree of spontaneity.

Kathleen Barrett - Paint

The medium I use - acrylic paints on canvas - is conducive to working with the spontaneous creativity that inspires my paintings. I have no pre-conceived message(s), and do not intend for my paintings to mean anything other than what they are. Any titles I might give them are merely afterthoughts used to distinguish one painting from another. However, seen as a whole body of work, I recognize that my paintings (and the titles) also reflect who I am as a person. Viewed this way, the underlying sentiment of my paintings reflects the angst, frustration and anger I feel as an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist citizen of a so-called "democratic" society, one which has never represented my ideals. This is a society which, in my eyes, glorifies murder in the form of war and enriches itself through the exploitation of people and nature, all the while denying the destruction that these practices entail. Those feelings and beliefs - as well as my yearning for the disappearing natural world, our life source - are part of who I am, and influence what I do, including my art.

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March 12 - April 13 2008
Young People's Own Show ~ High School


April 30 - May 11, 2008
Young People's Own Show ~ Elementary Show
Featuring work of Sunshine Coast Elementary and High School students.

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March 12 - April 13 2008
reception Wednesday, March 12, 3:30 - 5:30pm
with special guest entertainment by fabric artist Sandy Buck and her puppets

CANSCAIP Reception
(Canadian Society for Children's Authors, Illustrators and Performers)
Featuring children's book illustrations. This show is presented in collaboration with the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts and the Sechelt Public Library.

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click here for recipients of the awards, statements and images


February 13 - Mar 9 2008
reception Saturday, February 16, 1:00 - 3:00pm

Young Artist Awards Show 2008
All Artists Ages 5 to 18 who love to do artwork at home this is an art event to celebrate youth and art out of the school setting.

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January 9 - February 10 2008
reception Wednesday, January 9, 7:00 - 9:00pm

Friends of the Gallery - Arrange to be Hung

An amazing number of accomplised artists live on the Sunshine Coast and many of them participate every year in this group show., sharing ideas and techniques they have learned. In the past few years we have reached nearly 100 artists to the FOG exhibit. With so many selections of mediums included in the show there is always a good selection of styles to enjoy.

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November 21 - December 22, 2007
reception Wednesday, November 21, 7:00 - 9:00pm

Judy Ross - Abandoned Houses

Working primarily in abstraction, Judy Ross began quilting as a child under her grandmother’s tutelage. In her late teens she would baby-sit for countless hours; once the children were asleep she would quilt hundreds of little hexagons together. In 2002 she was the featured quilter for the Fibre Arts Festival here on the Sunshine Coast with an exhibition of ten abandoned house quilts. Her inspiration to quilt abandoned houses arose in 2002 when she became concerned about the fate of many such homes in Point Roberts. In this show Judy will be displaying large landscapes with houses—many of which no longer exist except in photographs, quilts, and in our minds. “The houses have the beauty of age as well as some of the dangers of age. They also pose the question of what is to happen. I find that as one ages, the past becomes less a matter of nostalgia and more a matter of reality that has been in almost every sense lost. How, in an endlessly progressing and expansionist society, are we to keep in touch with our individual or collective history, with the actuality that gave birth to what we have become? These quilts are a small attempt.’’

Barry Goodman - Authors: A Portrait

Barry Goodman is a history buff and teacher of art history who is interested in ideas such as the history of technology and communication, but has work in fibres that are very consciously grounded in a theoretical framework relating to contemporary currents in philosophy. “I began this series of portraits five years ago. I started with one single portrait, to test an idea, an experiment. I have always been interested in words, language, writing and even printing. The way which words, abstract marks on white pages, have the ability to produce images in our minds. I wanted in these portraits of authors, some familiar and others less so, (and some more then others!) to elicit a sense of texuality . . . a literalness. I have worked on other projects and yet still continue to return to the portrait.’’

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Oct 31 - Nov 18 2007
Young Peoples' Banner Project

Presentation, November 18, 1:00 - 2:30pm

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September 26 - October 28, 2007

Royden Josephson - Who Has Seen the Wind?

Working primarily in abstraction, Ashcroft painter Royden Josephson’s goal is “to make art that enriches life, art that helps us know ourselves and our world more intimately.” In this exhibition he pursues wind as a theme, exploring the formal relationship between elements on the canvas. “The notion of using wind as a theme is challenging in that wind is invisible, and therefore is totally illusive as a subject matter. Wind is a physical feature of our real world that concerns all, perhaps no one more than farmers and fishers.” Josephson has a BFA from the University of Manitoba. Having previously worked as an art teacher, he now devotes his time entirely to his own practice. Josephson has exhibited across Canada and in New York City.

Ed Varney - Postal Collages

Ed Varney’s inventive and resourceful “postal collages” are composed of strips of used envelopes including his original perforated “artistamps” that he has sent through the postal system and exchanged with other artists over thirty years. Each strip of torn envelope records a trip through time and space: “I suppose it’s a form of recycling, turning used stamps and envelopes into art, but it also reminds us that as a thing becomes obsolete (in this case snail mail) it becomes more precious.” Varney is a Canadian artist, curator, writer and poet based in Vancouver. In the early 70s, he was one of the original mail artists who formed an international network of artists and poets who exchanged work and ideas through the mail.

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August 21 - September 23 2007

Marilyn Marshall - Bending The Body

Local artist Marilyn Marshall's acrylic paintings bend anatomy. Working from the human body she sometimes simplifies, sometimes zooms in, resulting in novel shapes, textures and juxtapositions that transcend our usual experience of the body. Rather than replicating the human form she expresses the feeling, gesture or "meaning" of the figure.


Susan Furze - Exploring the Figure

Susan Furze transforms her usually abstract stained glass work to the figurative. She uses her skill in a variety of glass techniques and creates designs in homage to artists such as Klimt and Klee producing this "Body of Work."

Jan Poynter - Exploring the Figure

Jan Poynter takes the tradition of life drawing "mark-making" to the more permanent painted format. The paintings are composed within a square format combining charcoal and drawing mediums with acrylic paints. Poses are intentionally created to evoke a subtle emotional response in the viewer.

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July 10 - August 19, 2007

Annual Summer Invitational - On The Horizon

Selected Sunshine Coast Artists were invited to articulate the term on the horizon in a new work for this exhibition. Horizon can be interpreted as the limits set on personal or political issues; one's outlook of the present or future; or simply, depictions of earth meeting sky.

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May 30 - July 8, 2007

Jone Pane - Summer in Paradise

This photographic series depeicts wax figures idylically floating in water. Sechelt artist Jone Pane grew her garden specifically for photographic projects such as this.


Jana Curll - Lounge Ladies

These acrylic paintings of women are done in a whimsical portrait style. Vancouver artist Jana Curll portrays what she calls "elements of the feminine un-Divine".

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May 9 - May 27 2007
FIGURE IT OUT LIFE AND LIMB GROUP

The Sunshine Coast Arts Council is pleased to present the art by Life and Limn. This is the name of a group of painters who came together because of acquaintance and common purpose in the venerable Life Drawing sessions at the S.C. Arts Centre in Sechelt. Though some had had formal training in art, most were introduced to painting from a live model in the half-day workshops which Thomas Anfield, a noted Vancouver figurist, offered at the S.C. Arts Centre in 2001 and 2002. In the following two years, Anfield was persuaded to travel to the Coast for two 10-week life painting series. Thereafter, the group has met without instructor to paint from life each Thursday for ten weeks in the fall and ten weeks in the spring. In January 2005, these painters put on a group show called Revelations at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery. In March of that year, the show travelled to Hope, BC.

In 2005-2006, the group gave itself the name, Life and Limn. It continues to paint together for twenty weeks of the year. Membership has changed over time, though a substantial core of “originals” remain with the group. Membership is approximately eight painters for reasons of space as the group meets in the art studio in the S.C. Arts Centre. “Life and Limn” is a self-regulating group, with members sharing the work associated with setting up painting sessions with a live model. Most members also continue to draw with the Life Drawing group, and some paint together en plein aire during the summers.

Members of Life and Limn come from widely different walks of life and from backgrounds ranging from art school to no art instruction, though most members make use of courses and workshops offered on the Coast, in Vancouver, at the Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts (MISSa), and on location in México and elsewhere. Life and Limn is moved to perpetuate itself by a common love for the challenge and inspiration of painting the human body.

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March 28 - April 15 2007
Young Peoples' Own Show
- Part 1 High School Students

April 18 - May 6 2007
Young Peoples' Own Show
- Part 2 Elementary Students

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February 21 - March 25 2007

Heather Conn - Maya on the Playa: Burning Man

Local photographer Heather Conn displays images from the last two Burning Man Festivals on the Playa of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. She documents this eight day annual Festival which is held as an experiment in community, radical self-expression and radical self-reliance; the attendance has grown from 20 participants in its first year (1986) to an estimated 39,100 in 2006.

Florence Debeugny - Through

Vancouver photographer Florence Debeugny exhibits a series she has been working on for the past four years. She photographs in industrial neighbourhoods, back alleys, shipyards and scrap yards through such barriers as wire fences, dirty and broken windows. Her focus is either on the background or the different layers of the foreground, illustrating the way we observe, judge and interpret the world around us.

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January 10 - February 18 2007
FRIENDS OF THE GALLERY

1987 was the first year of the Friends of the Gallery at the Sunshine Coast s Centre, soon after it became an annual exhibition. All Sunshine s Council members are invited to display one work of they have produced in the last year. This year the exhibition runs Jan 10- Feb 18, 2007.

An amazing number of visual artists live on the Sunshine Coast and many participate in this group show and share their accomplishments, techniques and ideas. In the last few years the number of artists in the exhibition has reached nearly 100. With that many works included there is always a good selection of media and styles.

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November 29 - December 22 2006

Dean Schutz - Crypto-Vision
Kevin McEvoy - Blue Mountain Graphic Editions

Two Exhibitions open at the Sunshine Coast s Centre on Wednesday November 29th. Local artist Dean Schutz exhibits recent paintings entitled Cryptovision. Concurrently Kevin McEvoy, artist& local secondary school teacher, exhibits lithographs in Blue Mountain Editions. The works will be on display until Friday December 22nd.

Kevin McEvoy is a multi-media artist who has perfected the demanding skill of printing by stone lithography. He operates his own press, and is in charge of the entire process. Kevin will exhibit some of his own lithographs as well as lithographs he has hand pulled for other artists. Works from artists Gordon Smith, Greta Guzek, Gordon Munroe, Kathyrn Jacobi, Lori-Ann Latremouille and Joan Warn will be included in this exhibit.

Dean’s new series of multi media paintings synthesize images and information from the barrage of the 21st century information super-storm. His ideas may come from dusty books, discarded maps, broken toys, and beached bones; Debussy to da Beastie Boys; birds to biocoenosis. Revealed in paint or hidden in code; as copies or carvings or collections. From here the intent becomes more focused and the picture becomes clear. Achieving that clarity is simple. All you need is Cryptovision The Sunshine Coast s Council is a volunteer-based society founded February 22, 1966 to raise to profile of local artists and artisans and to broaden the opportunities for Sunshine Coast citizens to enjoy and to participate in cultural activities.

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