It seems you can go home again, artistically speaking anyhow. Waterton, Alberta area artist Linda Anderson Stewart has spent many years primarily as a landscape painter in oils. However, when the opportunity came for her to put together her current gallery show at the Bluerock Gallery in Black Diamond, she decided to return to another artistic form she enjoys, floral watercolours.
Stewart said geography had a big part in determining the artistic path she has followed for much of her artistic career.
“I never thought I’d end up being a landscape painter,” she said. “But in the last how many years I have lived down here in Waterton it was just something that was front and centre in my world so I just started doing it. I have got quite involved in it and have enjoyed it a great deal.
Though she had done the occasional small watercolour piece while in her landscape period, it wasn’t until this winter that she decided to put all her efforts into creating a full-blown series of works in the medium. The result is A Passion for Petals, a collection of 16 new floral watercolours and watercolour collages currently showing at the Bluerock Gallery.
The artist said putting together the works for the exhibit was a very gratifying experience for her.
“This show in Back Diamond takes me back to my roots and to the things I like to do most, with the watercolour floral stuff being some of that work,” Stewart explained. “Some people say it’s my best work.”
The painter has done something unusual with the works in the exhibition. She’s added a layering technique to the paintings. It’s something she has cultivated in past landscape work.
Stewart explained it’s all about bringing an extra dimension to the paintings.
“It’s not strictly watercolour,” she said. “It’s also three dimensional. It comes from having done things in three dimensions with balsa wood for many years and from doing assemblage work, which requires you to build things. So it echoes all those things. I am doing watercolours of florals. Then cutting them up and rebuilding them into a three dimensional form. They are quite complex.”
A painter in her own right and co-owner of Bluerock Gallery, Karen Gimbel, said she urged Stewart to switch up her artistic game.
“We talked early on about all the variety of work she has done and I encouraged her to explore the watercolours,” she said. “I love watercolours.”
Gimbel admitted there was an element risk in Stewart making the change.
“She’s been painting a series of mountainscapes that are quite stirring,” the gallery owner explained. “So it’s really exciting as a fellow artist to watch her launch into a different direction. That takes a great deal courage when you are already successful painting in one style to head off in a style your patrons might not expect.”
Art lovers can experience all the colour and unusual technique employed in A Passion for Petals as it shows at the Bluerock Gallery through Sunday, July 24. The gallery is located across from Marv’s Classic Soda Shop on Centre Avenue West in Black Diamond.
