Top-floor art
Local painter chosen for one-year show at city hall
Kat Valcourt’s art has never been at such heights. Her reputation has been climbing through Prince George’s painting community for several years and now she is at the top of city hall.
Each year, the fifth floor of the municipal headquarters becomes a personal exhibition space for one coveted Prince George artist. This practice is still new, with only three previous shows in this permanent series. It started during the 2015 Canada Winter Games when Jennifer Pighin was the inaugural painter. She was followed by Laura Chandler in 2016, then Cher “Cfree” French in 2017 and now Valcourt.
The annual special exhibition is coordinated by the Community Arts Council. It was the work on display in their feature gallery this past January that CAC program manager Lisa Redpath used to get Valcourt into this new and unique place.
“Mayor Lyn Hall loved her work,” said Redpath. “I put out some suggestions and he chose wisely. I tried to curate together some scenes from the Prince George area, artwork that depicts recognizable places concepts from this place. I’m mindful of that when I send in the suggestions.”
That exhibition was called Northern Escapades, which was rife with the kind of scenery that would lend well to the kind of business being done on the fifth floor of city hall where the mayor’s office and many supplementary staff offices are located.
“It’s an honour for me,” Valcourt said. “It’s a very prominent place, a lot of people from out of town go there, and delegates doing important business. And this art is all about Prince George so I’m very honoured.”
Valcourt said the eight-piece collection reflects the city, and sprang from her inspirations at Tabor Lake where she does most of her painting in a studio near the water.
“It’s very recognizable: the cutbanks, a CN train with a park bench, rainbow trout, a lake scene, tall cottonwood trees but from a different perspective... Scenes of Prince George. I wanted to pay tribute to Prince George.”
Valcourt said she felt a compulsion to paint every day. “I have to get it onto the canvas or my head would explode.” She is one of the few she knows of anywhere near here to use alcohol ink as a medium, which has a lot of technicality in its use, so daily work keeps her skills sharp and growing.
“I have taken alcohol ink as my signature medium. What appeals to me is the vibrant colours. A lot of people love those colours. And you can do layers and layers of it and not have it go mud or turn black, because they are very translucent. If you let it flow by itself it will even flow into its own art form, its own beauty.”
It works best when applied to a nonporous surface like Cromatex plastic.
“It moves like you’d spill water. I use a stir-stick to move it around. I do a lot of detailed work, which takes a lot of practice. You have to get used to the drying properties, and how to manipulate that as you apply the layers. It is a medium you have to work hard to master, if you want to do detailed work.”
Each of these eight pieces is large in size, and catch the eye with their distinctive colour and vivid appearance.
As in the past three shows on the fifth floor of city hall, Redpath reiterated the CAC’s gratitude for that space as an art exhibition spot unlike any other.
“We are so grateful the city is supporting local artists in this meaningful way,” she said. “It shows our city leaders have a connection to the arts that’s meaningful and keeps it front of mind. When people come to that place in city hall, it’s for a lot of different reasons, and they can’t help but see what our local artists are capable of thanks to these displays.”
To see Valcourt’s show, it is on display for the next 12 months. They were installed on Friday and she has already gotten expressed interest for buying some of them, which is possible, she said, but they can’t be moved from that spot until the conclusion of the exhibit next March.
Meanwhile, the artist doesn’t rest. She will soon be unveiling a technicolour moose painting at another prominent public location, plus she is focused on a new series.
“I’m going to start another body of work,” Valcourt said. “It’s from the perspective of a bug, like looking between blades of grass, flying over a leaf, up close to a drop of water. A macro perspective. From down at the size that’s too small to notice, or from a perspective nobody would ever look from.”
Mayor Lyn Hall loved her work. I put out some suggestions and he chose wisely.
— Lisa Redpath