Next up at Art Gallery Kimberley is Revelstoke artist Sarah Hicks, whose solo exhibit ‘Cosmos Out Of Chaos’ will be on display from March 7 to 17.
Sarah has a passion for the natal world, and attempts to capture its beauty to invite viewers to share her deep connection to the environment in the hopes it will inspire them to cherish and protect it.
Raised in rural Saskatchewan, Sarah spent her days exploring; photographing; and drawing the local fauna. She often imagined the landscapes before human development: the grasslands and parkland ecosystems that once thrived, now replaced by fields; houses; and cattle.
Today, Sarah continues to see the beauty of western Canada’s mountains: the glaciers in their former glory; the past abundance of caribou and salmon; free-flowing rivers; old growth forests where cut blocks now lie. Yet, these daydreams are stained with what Sarah calls “an unwavering grief for the current state of the climate crisis”.
“While it is hard to not get completely overwhelmed, we still need to hold onto hope to adapt and mitigate, to “create cosmos out of chaos” (personal communication, Robert Sandford, September 22, 2022),” she said.
Working primarily in watercolour and acrylic, her stylistically flowy scenes are a blend of minimalist aesthetics and intricate detail and capture the vastness of the Canadian wilderness. Her work is created using either reference photos from her travels or en-plein-air in the backcountry.
Despite working primarily as a painter, the concept for “Cosmos out of Chaos” has come from a love for animals and the outdoors, manifested through an eclectic collection of vintage materials. Sarah explains, “You could say it all started with an ever-growing pile of retro National Geographic magazines that I used to dumpster dive for as a kid.” Other materials used are vintage photographs; maps; old Sierra Club magazines; Gardner Dam development propaganda booklets from the 50’s and 60’s; and old pro- and anti- forestry pamphlets from the 60’s onwards.
As Sarah’s pile of magazines and maps grew alongside concerns for the climate crisis, the idea emerged to overlay drawing, painting, and collage on to film photographs of places that reflect on humanity and climate change’s impacts on the environment.
Art Gallery Kimberley invites you to view the exhibit Thursday to Sunday, 9:30 to 4:30 and by appointment from Monday to Wednesday.
