Teresa Posyniak : PONDEROSA

Reception: Saturday September 21, 1-4 pm | Artist Talk at 2 pm

Poetry Reading by Nancy Holmes: Sunday September 22, 2-3 pm 

PONDEROSA is the culmination of four years of research and making inspired by the ponderosa pine trees of the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. The series evolved out of a collaboration with writer Nancy Holmes whose poetry inspired Posyniak “…to explore avenues I’d never anticipated, enriching not only my perception of these marvelous trees, but also my understanding of the changing climate we’re living in and the impact it’s having on us all.” 

The exhibition will include nearly 70 of Teresa Posyniak’s encaustic and mixed-media paintings alongside poetry by Nancy Holmes. 

“I think my poems respond to something in the paintings about our own human-created crisis at the heart of the ponderosa’s imperilled beauty.” – Nancy Holmes

Teresa Posyniak is an established artist based in Calgary whose career spans over 40 years. Led by social activism, her work has focused on themes of vulnerability and resiliency in women and children as well as the environment. This has resulted in meaningful collaborations with Blackfoot women elders, survivors of domestic violence, as well as fellow creatives: dancers, artists, and writers. She brings to her art a versatile professional training that includes degrees in literature and drama (1973), a BFA in painting and lithography (1981), and an MFA in sculpture (1983).

Nancy Holmes is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and collaborator on community-based eco art projects. Love and loss, nature and reading, spirituality and home, children and women's lives are her abiding subjects. She has published five collections of poetry, and is the editor of Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems. She is Associate Professor in Creative Writing at The University of British Columbia in Kelowna and is working on a new book of poetry that will include a sequence of ponderosa pine poems.