Seasons by Alexandrya Eaton and The Art of Drawing are the two current exhibitions on display now at Gallery 78.
As the warmer weather slowly begins to take hold, Gallery 78 looks towards the coming blossoms and blooms of spring with a new exhibition of work by Sackville-based artist Alexandrya Eaton.
“The work in this exhibition is about enjoying simple beauty,” says Eaton. “It is about taking time to enjoy surroundings, go on more walks, and appreciate the beauty all around us. It is about being grateful to be healthy and to live in a beautiful place, but also being aware of the passing of time.”
Her exhibition, Seasons, is largely defined by the bright colours of tulips and roses with occasional hints at the contrasting beauty of birch trees and late summer sunflowers.
“This work celebrates an appreciation of nature, and how things keep growing, keep flourishing,” she said. “It is about the wild roses in the summer and the sunflowers in the fall, the birch trees during all seasons and the forest walks all year round.”
As New Brunswickers make the transition from months spent indoors to enjoying the ever-invigorating arrival of budding trees and resilient crocuses, Eaton’s work serves as a prelude to what lies ahead and captures all that we love about the warmer weather’s natural beauty.
“During a year where we were all at home, when many people suffered loss in different ways, this work is a joyful celebration of the beauty of our changing seasons.”
As a compliment and a contrast to Eaton’s work, the Gallery’s current series of exhibitions also features The Art of Drawing, a collaborative exhibition featuring work by Jessie Babin, Melissa Kennedy, Ann Manuel, Stephen May, Daniel Porter, Stephen Scott and Stephanie Weirathmueller. Curated in part to highlight the raw beauty of a simplistic narrative, this exhibition carries viewers through an array of temperatures, techniques and mediums.
About Alexandrya Eaton
Alexandrya Eaton has had more than thirty solo exhibitions of her work; her paintings hang in numerous private and public collections across Canada, the United States, Europe, Bermuda and Jamaica.
Early in her career, Eaton was invited to participate in the “Symposium de la Jeune Peinture au Canada”, in Baie- Saint-Paul, Quebec. The youngest of fifteen international artists, her large twenty-foot painting then traveled to the exhibition, TERRE-TERRE, at the Museum of the Americas, in Washington, D.C.
Over the years, Eaton’s paintings have been included in several important group exhibitions, such as: Anecdotes and Enigmas, curated by Hermenegilde Chiasson; and BLISS, curated by Shauna McCabe. BLISS combined the work of four international artists exploring the image and idea of flowers and flowering, and its relationship to the poetic, questioning modern perceptions of beauty.
Learn more about Eaton’s career HERE.
