Hilda Oomen & Diana Zasadny: Our Backyards

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Left: Oomen, "Silver Dollar Bunch," oil on board,18" x 18";

Right: Zasadny, "Untitled," acrylic on canvas,24" x 24"

From East to West and Garden to Landscape, this exhibition bringing together two uniquely wonderful artists that celebrate our land in their unique way.  They work both in the studio and in-situ to create different perspectives of our surroundings.

preview: Thursday & Friday, October 1-2, 2020

Oomen artist statement:

"Gardening is central to my paintings. My work flows directly from the experience of working in

gardens. When the world changed in March, my creativity stopped and the urge to paint disappeared. 

By April I found a large piece of land at a farm, large enough to garden without limits. Adjacent to it, a sprawling wheat field changing from pale yellow to golden through the months was a constant calming space and a reminder of the abundance of a farm.

In an uncertain time this place felt reliable and purposeful. This new work is not so different from my work of six months ago. The farm garden enabled me to carry on when the world came to a halt and painting felt pointless. Each visit I’m greeted with waving stands of sunflowers, deep chocolate in colour, short ‘teddy bear’ sunflowers nestled in their shadow; security and comfort. Wide flower borders 50 feet long invigorate me and excite my senses. All is forgotten as I am lost in colour and movement under a deep blue sky and cradled by a golden wheat field.

As fall rolls in, I worry as I harvest the first squash, about what winter will bring. But there is promise

and hope and colour and excitement and it rekindles the urge to paint. I bring home arm loads of flowers and as they slowly droop and wither in the studio, the walls fill up with small painted squares of their presence. There is a restorative power in gardening, I have always felt a need to work with soil and plants but the farm garden during the crisis was about more than inspiration; it gave me purpose and restored my faith to paint."   

Zasadny Artist statement:

In my mind, my backyard is a large geographic range, stretching from Calgary south to the Montana border, from the Cypress Hills to eastern slopes of the Rockies. 

In the show OUR BACKYARD, I aim to share my enjoyment experienced in my travels of the southern Alberta region. I love all of it, the prairies, mountains and badlands, it activates my imagination and I create paintings on canvas. I drive to locations to sketch, hike and explore bringing home memories and inspiration. Ideas form on a rainy hike in Waterton Park, a drive through the badlands or under bright blue skies in the coulees near my home in Lethbridge. My paintings are a view from the trail or roadside into an expanse of prairie, grove of trees or fragments of wilderness organized into parks.

Using washes and layers of thinned acrylic paint on canvas, I create complex colors and textures in my artwork. It is a joy exploring different palette schemes to express the places that continue to fascinate me.  The style embraces both an impressionistic and abstract style of landscape painting. 

My studio is a few kilometers from Lethbridge at the McNally Community Center, a former school which my mother, aunts, uncles and cousins attended. My window looks out to the east at neighboring farmland where time is marked by the harvest and the color of the seasons.”