January 11 – February 11, 2024

MEET THE ARTISTS – Opening reception: Saturday, January 13th, 2 pm – 4 pm

In the Main Gallery

HIROSHI SHIMAZAKI | The World As I See It

The World As I See It offers a glimpse into the mental processes of a geographer/artist practicing watercolour landscape sketching and painting for 60 years. In so doing, he has come to realize that, for him, landscape painting has much more to do with what happens in his mind than with the mechanics of “how to paint.”  Defining landscape as the drama of the interplay between heaven, land, and living creatures, Shimazaki presents some five dozen paintings on a variety of papers and watercolour canvas and 72 original sketches. The arrangement of the paintings with accompanying texts offers five windows into the artist’s mind: why he painted, where he painted, when he painted, what he painted, and how he painted.

“His eye does not only dwell on a majestic mountain or monument, because his paintings might capture the churning power of water, the swirling flight of birds, or silhouetted people on a rainy and foggy night…. The collection reveals a spirit of yearning curiosity. It points repeatedly to some essence underlying the breathtaking beauty in our world. He invites us to join him in an appreciation of the mysterious flow of life.”
Hillary Rodrigues, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, University of Lethbridge

Shimazaki is a cultural geographer, a Professor Emeritus of international management, and self-taught landscape painter who lives on the Sunshine Coast, BC. Born in Tokyo and educated in political science, economics, and cultural geography in Japan and Canada, he has been a visiting professor/researcher at various academic institutions in Canada, Ecuador, Germany, Japan, Malaysia and Mexico. Shimazaki’s love of watercolour painting developed in tandem with his academic interests. Landscape sketching is a traditional research tool employed in geographical enquiry and analysis; over the years, he has honed his artistic skills and developed many of these sketches into watercolour paintings.

In the Eve Smart Gallery

SOEINE BAC | ODDMENTS

Oddments is a series of prints and photographs in the Eve Smart Gallery investigating the ways in which nature has been tamed and commodified to accommodate the needs of the human world. It is a response to our habit of defining objects according to values that derive from their immediate usefulness. Organic and inorganic remains are scanned to create photographs or used in combination with synthetic and organic inks to make prints, giving new life and meaning to objects that we normally discard once they are no longer seen as useful. Lemon seeds, onion skins, fish bones, and pine needles that normally become invisible once used for their conventional purposes become works of art that remind us of our connection to the natural world around us.

Soeine Bac is a Vancouver BC based artist who integrates visual art, media, sound art, and dance together into her artistic practices. She has studied Visual Culture at the University of London, Goldsmiths (MPhil) and Interactive Arts at Simon Fraser University (MASc). She has taught a variety of subjects at Simon Fraser University, Emily Carr University of Art & Design, Goldsmiths University of London, and Brunel University. Bac has exhibited in South Korea and Romania, and taken part in artist residencies in South Korea, Sweden, Estonia, Spain, Romania, and France.