Student art show at library
Wendy Framst’s annual student art show has gone international.
The local painter and art teacher has her spring exhibition up now at the Prince George Public Library. It is the usual collection of works by her and her students from the past year, but this time it also includes the artwork of a colleague she met during an intensive learning experience of her own.
Sarmed Mirza is an artist who, like Framst, took part in a workshop series in Scotland called the Edinburgh Atalier. Of all the students in these classes, Mirza and Framst clicked, stayed in touch to run art ideas past each other, and he also agreed to come to Prince George to work with some of her students and help with the annual student exhibition.
One of the most important lessons the two can teach the up-and-coming painters is how they met at an art school.
“I’m always trying to improve my own skills and pass that on to my students,” Framst said. “Every year I go on an art trip. This year it was the Edinburgh Atalier where three master instructors worked with the class as we all worked on their assignments, and they were constantly correcting us as we worked. It was a workshop in realism, and they were rigidly demanding in what they expected of us. My skill level improved and improved, because I had these top instructors basically dismantling my techniques and my ego, too. I get to bring that back and pass that on.”
The instructors in Edinburgh provided an image to each student. The assign- ment was to recreate it on their own canvas. If your lines were not within two millimetres of the original, it was considered grounds to start on it again.
“In realism, you are, in a way, trying to become a human camera,” said Framst. “That is not appealing to a lot of artists, but the better you get at that skill, the more freedom you have as an artist to be in control of your improvisations and abstractions. And for a portrait artist or a still-life artist, or someone interested in wildlife, it is a critical technique to master. I love that challenge.”
As an homage to her Edinburgh experience, she took on as a personal mission the painting of a portrait of each of her students. She displayed each portrait as the starting point for that aspiring artist’s portion of the exhibition at the library.
Several of the students are children, many are adults, each is at a different point in personal development. The show demonstrates that whole range of talent and style from the 16 student painters who chose to exhibit some of their work alongside that of Framst and Mirza.
Framst entitled the event The Dancing Paintbrushes. The collection is on display now until April 4 when a closing reception will be held for friends and family from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in the library’s Keith Gordon Room.
Student artists featured in Dancing Paintbrushes include Lynda Anderson, Jasbir Dhillon, Grace Dyer, Cole Glavina, Charlice Hartl, Austin Laurie, Hannah Mitchell, Wendy Moore, Jolanda Murfitt, Erica Orr, Ellie Owen, Joann Paquette, Yvonne Sawkins, Jeannette Spencer, Ava Temple and Kali Wilson.