MOSAIC – Arts, Culture & Community

SEEING IN PICTURES: Doris Rose

Doris Rose prefers to see in pictures, and now the world is looking back. From her home in the Meaford countryside, she has built a global audience online for her portrait paintings, sells directly through her own website, and this year saw her painting Stripes hang in competition in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Self-portrait of an artist

Creative blocks can be debilitating as an artist. The desire for inspiration to strike can be a siren’s song for even the most experienced artists. Sadly, that’s not how it actually works, tempting as it may seem. The work is the work and leads to inspiration - not the other way around. Building the work into a practice can often be the key to accelerating creativity. Building a practice is exactly what Kimberley-based photographer Frances Beatty has done with her self-portrait practice.

Finding comfort at the dining table

Autumn is my favourite season. I love the brilliance of leaves at peak colour. And I love the sepia wash that chilly rain and wind, presaging winter, paint upon fields and woodlands, gardens and neighbourhoods. This year, the season has brought our family extraordinary joy – the birth of our first grandchild – and profound grief – the death of a beloved sister. By mid-October, we sought a fitting antidote for the intensity of the preceding month. And so, I planned quiet drive through the countryside and comfortable dinner within view of the Georgian Bay for Mike and me.

The delight of wildlife art

Recently over a glass of wine with a friend, I was sharing some information about a past exhibit at my gallery in Owen Sound. The subject was wildlife art, something that for me as an amateur photographer had always been a passion. I was both taken aback and discouraged to have my friend dismiss the subject of this exhibit with a superficial smile and proceed to ask me what the next exhibit would be.

Finding meaning in the material

What does it mean to transform a landscape, and how do the materials we take from the earth shape our relationship with the natural world? These questions are at the heart of cut a path through the weeds and call it a garden, a new exhibition by D’Andrea Bowie at the Tom Thomson Art Gallery.

Vaudeville lives on in Owen Sound

When I was a child, my father would regale me with stories of his experiences attending live performances in the vibrant theatre life of his youth in Hamilton. At the time, the city had the honour of having the most live theatres per capita in North America. It had achieved this unlikely status simply because it was part of an unusual circuit, the “TH&B” (Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo) railway, and it owed its success to the popularity of vaudeville.

A tallgrass prairie near Paisley

On a beautiful clear day in mid-August, members of Saugeen Nature met at Peter Kotzeff’s farm near Paisley to hear about his progressive farming practices and tour his tallgrass prairie. Kotzeff grazes cattle and grows hay on productive land, but where there are wet areas or floodplains, and along stream- and river-sides, he plants native species that are adapted to live in these habitats. These plantings enrich and maintain the soil, prevent against erosion, absorb floodwaters and sequester carbon.

Land Acknowledgement

MOSAIC acknowledges that we publish within Saukiing Anishnaabekiing, the traditional territories of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, comprised of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation at Neyaashiinigmiing and the Chippewas of Saugeen First Nation. We give thanks for their stewardship of the land and waters and for the rich diversity of their cultures and pledge to recognize and uphold their traditional names and language within this publication.