Realism key for artist
Kim Brown MacDonald to open show at the Main Street Art Gallery
Kim Brown MacDonald was only a child when she discovered her passion.
The Glace Bay woman was 10 years old when she first started oil painting lessons with the late Helen Turner.
One day she drew her cousin’s portrait and an obvious interest emerged. Encouraged by her grandparents, she began art classes as well as guitar lessons.
“She (the guitar instructor) knew I had been painting as well. I wanted to learn guitar and tried and tried and one day she said to me, ‘Kim, stick to the paint brushes.’”
Brown MacDonald has been producing artwork for the past 46 years and has sold her work to people across the country. She has also had her work featured in art shows such as Pierscape and an IODE-hosted event.
Now a collection of her work entitled, Highlights and Shadows, will be on display at the Main Street Art Gallery in New Waterford. The solo show opens Friday from 3-5 p.m. and will include 24 pieces of acrylic and oil paintings. The show continues until March 31 during the New Waterford Credit Union’s business hours.
Brown MacDonald, 56, said throughout her career she has been most intrigued with drawing and painting portraits of people and has been commissioned to produce many pieces.
“I’m into realism, that’s what I really love to do.”
One featured piece in the show is a four-foot painting of coal miner Sandy White, who was featured in Equinox Magazine. Brown MacDonald said her husband Joey, who worked for Devco for 19 years, worked with White.
“I thought the painting needed to be big because he is larger than life,” she said. “He is just a wonderful person, was such a hard working man. What a great subject he was for that article.”
However Brown MacDonald also has a love of nature and finds inspiration in her own backyard where in the summer
her husband operates the Old West Greenhouse. The flowerbeds, vegetable gardens and greenhouses have become the subject of many paintings.
“I can just go in the backyard and get subjects from the apples on the trees to deer coming in the back and Canada geese landing.”
Her work hangs in restaurants, a doctor’s office, Sobeys, the Fortress of Louisbourg and the Nova Scotia Health Authority’s mental health office in Glace Bay.
Although an accomplished artist, Brown MacDonald enjoys taking art lessons and as studied with Kenny Boone, Bill Rogers and Marie Moore.
“Altogether I probably have 30 years with Marie and I’m still with her. There’s always something to learn,” she said.
Although Brown MacDonald
was noted for oil painting, two years ago she began using acrylics after taking a workshop from artist Alan Bateman.
“He’s an acrylic painter,” she said. “I took the workshop which was fabulous, I loved it. It was the ease of how he used the acrylics.”
She now works with acrylics and dabbles in watercolours and pastels.
Artist Patsy MacKinnon, curator of the Main Street Art Gallery, said she has seen Brown MacDonald’s pieces in various art shows and her work is to be enjoyed.
“Strong contrasts and colour highlight Kim Brown MacDonald’s joy of creating, attention to detail and clear painting style.”