Opening Reception: Saturday, August 31, 2pm – 4pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, August 7th, 2pm – 3pm
An impressive collection of painted and drawn portraits by Maurice Spira spanning more than 40 years, many of which will be exhibited to the public for the first time. Spira conducts his portrait sessions live with no camera mediation used, and his hope with this particular exhibition is that it will inspire young artists to draw directly from life. His considerable archive of portraits often depicts local people in our community, some now deceased, but most very much alive. Inspired from a young age by the drawings in classical portraiture such as Hans Holbein’s, but not constrained by the same demands of that age, Spira goes one step further than replication of what the eye sees and undertakes an expressive examination of each subject. His portraits represent a balance between this expressive examination, reality, and truth.
Born in Kent, England, Spira came to Montreal in 1966, where he describes the psychoactive enriched counter-cultural milieu as having transformed him utterly. After traveling and painting in Mexico in the mid-seventies he moved to Vancouver and then to the Sunshine Coast in the early 1980’s. More than thirty years later he continues to paint and print in his Roberts Creek Studio.
Spira has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions throughout the Lower Mainland and in Ontario, Washington, and on the Sunshine Coast. His work has been shown in group exhibitions in Ireland, Kuwait, New Mexico, and Washington State; as well as in Ontario, the Lower Mainland, and on the Sunshine Coast. Other projects of his include several book cover illustrations and large scale public murals in Vancouver and on the Sunshine Coast. Spira now describes himself “as Artist, Gardener, Book Collector” who, although busy with painting and printing, still finds time to grow excellent red cabbages and spuds.
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