Every artist has a different vision and style of expression, every art medium different strengths and challenges. These three Huntsville area artists have decided to explore the influence that the style and medium of each bring to a common scene. You can see the resulting images of Kelly’s photographic art, Catherine’s egg tempera painting, and Susan’s fused glass in The Eye of the Maker, running until September 17.

The starting point for each of the images in the show is drawn from nature, a subject common to the work of all three.  Kelly shot many different photographs specifically for the project and she says “It was essentially up to me to select the subjects for Catherine and Susan.  As such, there was more than usual pressure to find interesting scenes and record them with equally interesting composition and technical perfection.”  Seven images were eventually selected.  From that point, the three worked independently, agreeing that the original photos could be abstracted or changed in any way.

The resulting twenty-one artworks in glass, paint, and photographic art will be displayed along with the original photographs that inspired them.

For the exhibition, Kelly has transformed her original photographs, layering them with other textural images to create her distinctive photographic art.

It was an unusual challenge for Susan who translated the photographs into glass. In her work, she occasionally uses photographic reference, but her designs are mostly imagined stylized landscapes, rather than realistic.  “I spent a long time finding my way into the first piece for the show. In the end, I emphasized the textural contrast and the planes in the photograph and invented my own colour scheme. After that, I realized that my work for the show had to be rooted in colour, and the other pieces came from that.”

For her detailed landscape paintings, Catherine usually works from her own photographs. “Before I started, whenever I described the project, I was surprised at the number of people who wondered if working from someone else’s photographs would affect my connection with the painting. Truly, every painting I do comes with a story, and because I hadn’t been present to experience the time and place of these shots, there was a difference.  But Kelly's beautiful photos are of my land, my own country, and they conjure as I hope my paintings do, the feeling of a time, a day, a place that “I know". 

Located at 15 King Street in Bracebridge, the gallery is open year-round, Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 1pm and 2pm to 5pm. It is closed during the last week of September and the second week of October as well as between Christmas and New Year’s Days. Please check the Calendar of Events for the actual dates. For a map, please follow this link.

Exhibitions are booked one year in advance.  To learn how to apply for a show, please follow this link: Exhibition Application.

The Chapel Gallery was opened in September, 1989. Housed in a reconstruction of the first Presbyterian Church in Bracebridge, the Chapel Gallery hosts exhibitions of art and craft by our members and other local and provincial artists. Exhibitions are selected by the Gallery Committee and change every three to four weeks.