'MERGING IN LIGHT', New Paintings by Annie Okuda & Tish Saunders, June 30-July29, at Insight Art Gallery

‘Merging in Light’, New Paintings by Annie Okuda & Tish Saunders

    These two painters are long-time Galiano artists.   Recently Tish has been painting  realistic, acrylic on canvas landscapes of places on Galiano that she knows and loves.

I am very pleased that this year Annie Okuda and I are having a show together. I have known her and her family for many years, and as well as being my outstanding Yoga teacher, she is also a fabulous painter. I look forward to seeing both hers and my work on the walls together.

These days, I have been doing landscape paintings, more on the realistic side, paintings of places that I know and like here on Galiano. I’m interested in things like: how the sky looks; how the light falls on objects; the kind of weather that is blowing through; what the surface of the water is doing.

I enjoyed the sheer distances when I did a painting from the Bluffs a while ago. It was exhilarating sketching up there, and just feeling the height and breadth of the view. You see almost all the way to Sidney - how tiny things looked that distance away. Translating that onto a canvas required the smallest of strokes.

I’ve been visiting the Bluffs for 32 years now. I felt a strong sentiment during the time I spent there. It seemed to me that the Bluffs have changed in a slow, geological way, while the people, all the lives I’ve known here, were more like a fast, flickering movie in comparison. On this island, we have many beautiful places we can visit and contemplate such things. As I stood high up on the Bluffs, I was thinking that I was so very glad I found Galiano when I did. I am thankful. It has been my good fortune and honour to come to know this beautiful island and all the good people I have met.

Quietly painting and observing, standing on the shore or in the woods, these thoughts arise and make the work of painting even more pleasurable. I hope that I have captured that in these canvasses and the viewer can experience the same joy that I have felt.

I my life as Annie O.

I notice the light dancing around objects of beauty, in form and colour.

I am blessed with the opportunity to capture these images for posterity.

Come see my latest offerings of colour captives

that are free to jump for your joy.

See you at the Insight Art Gallery

Annie Okuda