Parksville artist Fay St. Marie returns to the Qualicum Art Supply and Gallery to exhibit her cherished Ukrainian series and more, until the end of November.
The series is something St. Marie has found herself continuously returning to since she completed a mission trip to Ukraine in 2008, where she and 10 other volunteers worked to help widows and orphans.
“We supplied packets of staple foods and toiletries, stuff like that. And as they (the widows) were carrying them home, I would take images of them and then sketch them later. And then I started painting them. And it grew and grew, and it started including my mother’s heritage, and I ended up moving into a whole series,” she said.
The inspiration may have blossomed from witnessing the resiliency of the widows she helped, however, it soon developed into a wider series that also incorporated the nation’s countryside and culture.
As a means to further incorporate culture into her work, one of the most recent additions to the series, Baba Feeding the Chickens, has thread with acrylic paint on canvas, where the thread-work is reminiscent of Ukrainian embroidery.
The series has been well-received across the nation, having previously exhibited in Saskatoon and Toronto as well. In January of 2011, the Ukrainian Museum of Canada purchased her painting titled Laundry Time for their collection.
READ MORE: Colourful Ukrainian art on tap
While St. Marie acknowledges herself as a “series artist”, there is more than just one story at the Qualicum Art Supply and Gallery. Her varied exhibit also includes different types of floral, landscapes and even pomegranates, in acrylic and mixed media.
“If I’m on a roll with something, I go with it,” she said, adding that the different themes exemplify her love for the variety of life.
According to the artist herself, everything currently on display in Qualicum Beach has been completed within the past two years.
Although St. Marie has lived in Parksville since 2005, she grew up in Saskatchewan on a farm outside of North Battleford.
Her artistic career began at the University of Saskatchewan where she enrolled in a fine arts program. However, after a year, she changed gears and pursued a career in the health field instead, obtaining a Bachelor of Science in nursing.
After working in public health nursing for approximately 25 years throughout Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories, St. Marie eventually returned to the arts and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinguished Exhibition from the University of Saskatchewan.
“I’ve always been interested in the arts since I was a little kid in school,” she said. “I would always help decorate the schools. So it’s just a part of me, something I grew up with and continue on with. Ideally, I would have liked to have been a medical illustrator, but that wasn’t in the cards.”
When she first started painting full-time, St. Marie would focus mostly on the prairie landscape, and like her Ukrainian series, is something she keeps going back to.
That favouritism has now expanded to included wide-open, often oceanic, spaces.
“I don’t like being crowded in by mountains and trees,” she said with a chuckle.
With her work, St. Marie also enjoys building different textures to add to the “feeling”on her chosen subject.
“When I first came here, I saw these rocks along the shore and they had such a beautiful texture to them,” she said.
“And so I started painting that, with the ocean in the background… And it was interesting to use a bunch of textures to get the form of the rocks, to really get that feeling that you were there.”
St. Marie’s work of mixed media on canvas, titled The Loon Calls, is currently part of the Federation of Canadian Artists gallery in Vancouver until Nov. 14, 2021.