Pinned to a cork board on the wall of Linda Yurgensen’s studio is a photo of her and her father painting together during a recent trip she took back to her home province, Nova Scotia. It’s a reminder of her very first inclination to translate reality into a representative vision through art.
=0D=0A=The urge to paint has become “an overwhelming desire to do something creative,” she said. What inspires her now are the forests, landscapes and seascapes of her Vancouver Island home… and always colour, vibrant hues of reflected sunlight.
=0D=0A=Like the Group of Seven, her work is deeply evocative of place, of Vancouver Island. We do get plenty of cloudy, rain-sodden days here, but Yurgensen sees and portrays them as anything but drab. “When I look at a foggy day, even, I’m not seeing grey, I’ll see purple and blue.”
=0D=0A=She wants viewers to experience her new homeland’s contours, shapes and hues through her art. “I’m hoping they see the West Coast as I do, not as a drab place, but the beautiful, green, lush, colourful rainforest, which is Vancouver Island,” she said. “Before I came I had no idea that this was here, now I’m never going to leave.”
=0D=0A=Linda Yurgensen will be featured artist January 6 through February at Rainforest Arts, 9781 Willow Street in Chemainus, open from 11 am to 4 pm daily. She will be hosting an art demo Saturday, Jan. 18 from 2 to 4pm at the gallery.
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