Art show opening Tuesday at Kettle Valley Memorial
From Jan. 31 through March 28, Kettle Valley Memorial, in partnership with Tumbleweed Gallery, will present Seeds of Hope, an exhibition of paintings by Kelowna artist Jolene Mackie.
This is the first solo exhibition of Mackie’s work since the COVID shutdown. It is especially meaningful to her and is dedicated to her mother who died in June 2022.
An Emily Carr fine arts graduate, Mackie is a recipient of the Arts Council of the Central Okanagan Visual Arts Award. Her work is exhibited widely thorough out the Okanagan Valley and B.C.. Aside from paintings on the usual canvas or board, Mackie’s murals can be seen on the walls of the administration offices at
Naramata Centre, at the
Vernon City parkade, on the ceiling of the
Kelowna CMHA and at the BC Children’s
Hospital Teck Acute
Care Centre in
Vancouver.
What drew Mackie to the arts was the freedom it gave her to ponder her existence.
“My paintings have become a vessel for my feelings and how I process and understand the world. My creative practice is deeply rooted in my mortality…I am this being, this lump of flesh that has consciousness! And yet this body is so temporary. Everything is so ephemeral.”
Mackie’s medium of choice is oil. Oil has a slower working time and it gives her a chance to contemplate and be in the present moment.
“When I’m painting I’m not thinking about anything but what’s right in front of me.”
Mackie is known for her surreal, otherworldly scenes. Islands float serenely in outer space painted in hues that range from soft blues and greys to orange and mauve. All reminiscent of Albert Bierstadt’s romantic landscapes on up to a more modern palette of unabashedly brilliant jewel tones.
The central figure often found in Mackie’s paintings is a backpack-toting robot bearing a heart on his bib. She admits this is her alter ego – this “curious little investigator… has somewhere to take me; he’s got something to show me.” The robot might be sitting at the edge of an island, feet dangling in space, or walking along a magical path. Curly-cued fronds of a rainbow-coloured swirl of bejewelled geometric shapes emanate from him and flow towards the sky. Perhaps they depict the robot’s thoughts or emotions of awe or wonderment – not fear – as he stands in the midst of the unknown.
It was one such painting that Kevin Smith, owner of Kettle Valley Memorial purchased from Tumbleweed Gallery a few years ago. He describes the piece entitled A Moment to Ponder as a “very cool – there’s this robot, roaming around in the universe – sort of like what it might be like after we pass on.”
The painting now hangs in the viewing room at Kettle Valley Memorial, where gives solace to visitors giving the loss of a loved one.