June 2020

June 2020
Contact Information:

Secretary   victoriasketchclub@gmail.com

VSC website   www.victoriasketchclub.ca 
 
Facebook  
 https://www.facebook.com/victoriasketchclub/
Summer 2020 en plein air Program
Upcoming Dates
July 7 Fort Rodd National Park
July 14 Kinsman Gorge Park (Japanese Gardens, etc.)
July 21 Saxe Point Park, Esquimalt
July 28 Island View Beach / Michell's Farm area (previously rained out)
Aug 4 Starling Lane Vineyard

Questions? Contact
Avis Rasmussen (avis.rasmussen37@gmail.com)
Rand Harrison (randharr@telus.net)
Scenes from June 2nd
Despite the damp and gloomy weather, the foliage at Playfair Park was glorious! About a dozen hardy souls made it out today, complete with social distancing measures and masks.
Scenes from June 9th
Today's plein air, scheduled for Island View Beach / Michell's Farm area, was scrapped by Mother Nature. No-one (to the editor's knowledge) made it out to sketch but, of course, we're all grateful for the precipitation (right?).
Scenes from June 17th
Today's plein air was at our beautiful Government House, which boast 19 gardens. The club had a good turnout (approximately 18 artists), including a visit from honourary member, the Honourable Janet Austin, the province's 30th Lieutenant Governor. She was accompanied by Vice-Regal Canine Consort MacDuff Austin-Chester, a delightful and extremely sociable West Highland Terrier (a.k.a., Westie).
Scenes from June 23rd
We had a good turnout at Ross Bay Cemetery -- about 15 artists were on-site -- and lovely weather. Opened in 1873, many historical figures from the early days of the province and colony of British Columbia are buried here. The cemetery is named after its owner, Isabella Mainville Ross, the first registered independent woman landowner in British Columbia. Isabella was Indigenous-- an Anishinaabe and French Métis woman.
Scenes from June 30th
Today's plein air was held at the Laurel Point Inn. Despite variable weather and brisk winds, the club had a good turnout, and artists were able to take full advantage of the shelter provided by the Laurel Point Inn. A big thank-you goes out to Sharon Stone for arranging VSC's visit.
History Corner
by John Lover
Goward House in Cadboro Bay is now firmly established as a centre for cultural and artistic activity in the community. It has close associations with the Victoria Sketch Club, both as a facility for holding art exhibitions and the fact that it served us as a temporary home for our Tuesday meetings whilst the new Windsor Park Pavilion was under construction in 2005. During the 1990s it was also the venue for a weekly portrait painting session organized by a section of our Club, in which members and friends took turns to sit as models.

The house, of heritage value, was built and occupied for almost 80 years by the Goward family, with which our Club also enjoyed special links.  Originally called The Woodlands, it was designed in 1908 in the style of a wood-frame Colonial wood-frame bungalow by Bernard and Mary Goward, reflecting their time in India. In 1946 it became the home of their son Owen Goward and his wife Elizabeth, and was eventually sold to the Corporation of Saanich for $123,000 in 1973, on terms which allowed the family to  live there until 1986, when Elizabeth – Owen had died in 1983 – chose to vacate the property.

The house was converted to a seniors’ activity centre, managed by the Goward House Society, founded on a non-profit basis in 1989. In recognition of the Goward family’s lasting legacy to the Greater Victoria arts community, the Society offered Elizabeth the first honorary membership.  She passed away in 2002.

Former Club President, Kay Mais, recalled visiting the house in the Goward years, and was impressed with its “Old World Charm,” as well as with a gallery, set up on Owen’s retirement in 1971, to display the couple’s art works. Owen was an engineer by profession and an artist by avocation. He had studied art by correspondence from the Royal Academy in London, and Elizabeth had graduated from the Art Institute of Philadelphia, where the pair had first met.

Owen and Elizabeth were successful portrait, landscape and commercial artists. Both exhibited in the Island Arts and Crafts Society annual exhibitions in the late 1940s. Elizabeth was a noted portrait artist and Owen a talented watercolourist.  Several of his paintings can be found in the collection of the Royal BC Archives.

Owen Goward was an engineer by profession and an artist by avocation. He met his wife, Elizabeth, a noted portrait artist, at the Philadelphia School of Art. The couple married in 1938, returning to Canada in 1946 and making their home in Victoria.
Owen Goward exhibited with the Island Arts and Crafts Society in its final years in the late 1940s. A talented watercolourist, several of his paintings are in the collection of the Royal British Columbia Archives. He died in Victoria in 1983.
Members News

Imagine Artworks Collective

See the work of VSC artists Anne Bowen, Sharon Wareing and Maureen Ness at the ongoing group art show at the Marriott Delta Ocean Pointe Spa, 100 Harbour Road. Go here for details re: COVID-19 updates.

Mosaic Group Art Show

January 3rd to present – Mosaic Group Art Show continues until further notice, featuring the works of VSC members Maureen Ness and Niramon Prudtatorn.
Gallery 5 exhibition : including the art of VSC members Niramon Prudatorn and Maureen Ness

Union Club of BC

June 1st to  July 30th 2020 – Maureen Ness solo art show – The Union Club of BC – Renaissance Room
Quotes to Inspire
compiled by Virginia Hutzuliak
Emily Carr 2

1. Regarding being told that she was '"stuck in the country," she said, "it's exactly where I want to be. What I want to express is here, and I love it. Amen."

2. “Oh God, what have I seen? Where have I been? Something has spoken to the very soul of me, wonderful, mighty, not of this world.“      --1927

3. “Go out there in the woods. See God in every particle of them expressing glory and strength, and power, tenderness, and protection.”   --1931

I so admire Emily Carr for her clarity of focus despite naysayers. She truly paddled her own canoe. After completing a painting, she showed it to her sister who looked at it and said, “Nice frame.”

Against all odds her vision became clearer and clearer, and she had the inner strength to go her own way artistically, socially, at a time when women were not known for their independence or skirting “the rules” of the society she lived in. She was so much more than an artist.
Fun Stuff in Sequestered Times

Working with pencil crayons...

Using the techniques I discussed in last month's newsletter, I've been working on Blue Flower Study.  Enjoy!

-- submitted by Janice Graham; email janice.graham@shaw.ca
Thoughts from COVID-19 Isolation Chambers
Ray Goldsworthy's 8" x 8" pen and ink image, entitled "We'll Meet Again," references both the strange history we're making, and pays homage to the beautiful anthem of hope made famous by British singer, Vera Lynn. Dame Vera Lynn passed away June 18, 2020, at the age of 103.
 
We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when
But I know we'll meet again some sunny day
Keep smiling through, just like you always do
Till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away
So will you please say Hello, to the folks that I know
Tell them I won't be long
They'll be happy to know, that as you saw me go
I was singing this song
We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when
But I know we'll meet again some sunny day.

 
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