Mary Whale | Between the Lines

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Mary Whale, "Mufty and Bill (detail)"

watercolour. Image courtesy of the artist.

Opening Reception: Friday September 22^nd, 7-10 pm

People as subject matter are of particular interest to Mary Whale, a well-recognized and accomplished Edmonton-based visual artist, educator, and a community activist. The complexity of combining the physical and psychological elements of characters has infinite possibilities for Whale’s artistic expression.

Presented in conjunction with the International Day of Older Persons on October 1^st (declared by the United Nations General Assembly on December 14, 1990), this evocative exhibition project showcases the suite of expressive portraits of older adults, celebrates the beauty of ageing, and highlights the ageing  aesthetic in the body of Whale’s compelling and elegantly executed watercolours. Mary Whale has been engaging older adults for portrait sittings for over 20 years as both a visual artist and a gerontologic nurse.  What began as an extension of her intertest in watercolour portraits evolved into an exploration of a unique process that is a mode of reminiscence and – in the essence – a positive experience for the model. According to an ancient adage: “it is natural to see the beauty of youth, but one must learn to appreciate the beauty in ageing.”

As Mary Whale says: “…  watercolour is the perfect medium to capture the many dichotomies of ageing: the frailty and resilience, the fleetingness firmly entrenched in time, the strength of character existing within the weakness of flesh, a lifetime faced with the imminence of death.  It is the sitter’s story I pursue in the spirit of collaboration. I believe that the opportunity to focus on the phenomenology of the sitting (i.e., the exploration of the experience) is central to my practice.”

In the process, Mary Whale’s conceptually compelling works have altered the mediality (the perceived reality influenced through media that one is exposed to) of ageing in our society by presenting more realistic and positive images of what it really means to grow older.

Closing Reception: Sunday, October 1^st, 2-5 pm. Closing reception to be held in conjunction with the International Day of Older Persons.