Coin Rockies Render
New $20 silver coin.
Artist Stéphanie Gauvin credits frequent postings of her paintings on Facebook for landing her right on the money – literally: Her painting of Tower Peak in Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park is featured on a new $20 silver coin produced by the Royal Canadian Mint.
Gauvin said an old friend, Annie Dubreuil, who now works at the mint as a product manager, saw her paintings on Facebook and invited her to submit her work for a special landscape series of four coins the mint is producing for collectors. The one-ounce coins sell for $100 and are part of a limited mintage of 7,500 coins.
Christine Aquino, a spokesperson for the mint, said product managers are always on the lookout for new talent, and often go online to find it. “When we had this series coming up, Annie knew of an artist whose style would fit very well for this series, and that’s how Stéphanie was contacted,” said Aquino.
Gauvin, who lives in the small mountain community of Rossland, B.C., grew up in Quebec and studied fine arts at Le Cégep de Sherbrooke before moving west to ski and plant trees some 20 years ago.
Aquino said the mint, a Crown corporation, maintains a database of about 200 artists, but is interested in new artists whose work can be translated into engravings, especially those skilled with portraiture or wildlife.
Landscape is a common genre for painters, some with much grander careers than Gauvin, who is represented by Hambleton Galleries in Kelowna and is active with the Federation of Canadian Artists. Understandably, Gauvin is thrilled. “I’m really excited that my work is getting such a high profile,” she says. “It’s the best I could ask for to be immortalized on the coins.”
The mint’s other recent releases include a coin shaped like a maple leaf and photographer Yousuf Karsh’s portrait of Albert Einstein.