Stephen Thirlwall
Large public galleries aren’t the only place to see art in Ottawa. Small private galleries can often expose you to new art and artists, many of them local – for example, the Wall Space Gallery.
I recently visited this gallery after it moved to Ottawa South after a long stay in Westboro. Its new location at 1090 Bank Street (at Sunnyside) makes it a bit more accessible to the Centretown public.
The gallery carries work from a wide stable of artists, both local and beyond. Works on the walls range from fanciful to realistic to abstract, from painting and multimedia to prints, photographs, sculpture, dioramas, pottery and jewellery.
The gallery’s space is clean and fresh with a lot of light coming through the large front and side windows. The building used to be a dollar store and before that a pharmacy.
David Lidbetter
The main exhibit for November was paintings by David Lidbetter, who currently lives in Aylmer, Quebec. He is one of my top five local artists. From the large number of paintings he has sold, he is obviously highly regarded by many others.
Lidbetter presents Canadian landscapes that have elements of mystery with patches of bold colour. The objects within scenes, particularly trees or blocks of forest, are in part stripped down to a minimalism. But the edges are detailed and small elaborations of features or colours can be discovered in various places.
He loves large patches of snow contrasted with stark trees, broken up here and there by rows of dried-up grasses. Icy streams have elliptical openings exposing water surfaces that reflect pictures of everything around. Backgrounds often have walls of forest breaking in places to let through the glowing light of sunrises or sunsets. His rock surfaces are multicoloured patchworks. Some paintings are shaded in a romantic mist.
Seeking inspiring views, Lidbetter goes out walking in many locations, mostly local. He captures photos and makes sketches on paper and in his mind. When he was young taking drawing classes, he found it tedious; but these classes are now paying off by giving him a strong foundation for his paintings. As he paints, his mind and fingers edit from the full landscape view to what will be included and what will be removed. He is excellent at just presenting what is necessary to convey strong emotions.
He can now support himself through his art. When he’s not outside exploring, he paints for about eight hours a day, seven days a week, producing about 200 paintings a year. At any one time, he has several paintings on the go, and he moves back and forth between them. Each larger one takes a couple of months to complete. He can produce smaller paintings in about 20 minutes, plus drying time.
Most of his paintings are created using water-based oils on canvas that he finds gives him a lot more control in creating the works and applying details with fine brushes. From time to time, he also produces watercolours.
The gallery’s main December exhibition will be Nicole Allen’s Beyond the Garden Gate: flower gardens and bouquets bursting with every colour and type of bloom.
Other artists featured at the gallery
Peter Colbert, Erica Hawkes, Tanya Kirouac, Peter Rotter, Lori Richards paint imaginative natural landscapes, some slipping towards the abstract. Crystal Beshara does this as well but also moves into rural farm settings.
Vanessa McKernan offers imagined spaces connecting our inner selves with the outside world. Amy Shackleton’s Imagined Futures brings urban development into new hybrid relations with nature, while Eryn O’Neill produces unusual architectural views of urban infrastructure and transformation.
Richard Ahnert and Drew Mosley paint fantastical creatures. Drew, as well as Dauma Stirbyte and Stefan Thompson, also build them from clay or other materials. Sharon Kelly and Laura Culic go fully into abstract landscapes and Patti Normand into otherworldly situations.
Artists, whether exhibiting in large or small galleries, open our minds to new perspectives, experiences and ways of thinking.