Opening reception: Join the Pickled Painters at Colborne Street Gallery

An opening reception will be held Saturday May 13 at the Colborne Street Gallery in Fenelon Falls with The Pickled Painters — 12 artists who paint en plein air, the French term for open air painting.

The 12 women organize and undertake extensive trips into the wilderness, including locations around the Kawartha Lakes region, Algonquin Park, and beyond, to explore, experiment, and create together. Every member is assigned a role within the group, based on their strengths, to compliment and support the whole.

Painting lakes, rivers, trees, mountains, rolling hills, forests and more, most of their subject matter borrows from idealized Canadian painting tropes such as rugged, idyllic, and seemingly untouched landscape scenes. The gallery is featuring their works until June 18.

The invention of oil paint in tubes during the late 19th century, alongside the collapsible easel, changed how and where artists could make their work, according to a media release from the Colborne Street Gallery.

Previously confined to a studio, artists and their assistants needed interior spaces to store and mix their desired mediums.

When paint became available in tubes, the artist gained a much wider freedom in where they could paint and for how long. Travelling into rural and more natural landscapes for extended periods of time to create, had a significant impact on art history.

By the early 20th century, Canadian artists such as Tom Thomson, Lauren Harris, Emily Carr, were embracing Canada’s vast and varied landscape by venturing deep into the wilderness to paint en plein air, and travelling great distances across the country to record and interpret what they were seeing and feeling. While these works show an idealized vision of Canada at the time, the impact is still apparent in contemporary Canadian landscape painting.

All the artists in this show are members of the East Central Ontario Art Association. Others are members of the Kawartha Lakes Arts Council, The Women’s Art Association, Society of Canadian Artists, Ontario Society of Artists, and Scugog Council for Arts. Marissa Sweet, Joanne Barker, Kate Segriff, and Rhonda Laursen are all featured in Season 2 of Landscape Artist of the Year Canada which premiered on CBC in 2020. With a rich exhibition history between them, these women are forging their path as a rural collective.

The gallery’s reception will be held from 4-7 p.m. For more information visit colbornegallery.ca or call 705-887-0997.