SOUTH STORMONT, Ontario – South Stormont residents Alan and Audrey Bain have an art show on display at the Marianne van Silfhout Gallery at the St. Lawrence College Brockville campus.
The husband and wife team have been making art together since 1961 and will be displaying their work from then until now at this show titled “Together Over the Years: A Retrospective.
The show started running on Sept. 22 and will continue until Oct. 27 with an open house from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the gallery on Sept. 30.
Alan, studied geology at McGill University and worked as an exploration geologist and eventually a public school educator. Alan was a principal at Nationview, Morrisburg, Newington and Martintown.
Audrey, was an artist all of her life with her early work being in oil painting before moving to acrylic. She attended the Nova Scotia Academy of Art and graduated from St. Lawrence College with a Diploma in Fine Arts. She also served as Gallery Director at the Cornwall Regional Art Gallery for 10 years.
“We would go and take photographs together of landscapes and then critique them,” said Alan. “Then I decided I’d start painting them too. I wanted to do something different than Audrey, so I worked in watercolour.”
In his life as a geologist, Alan worked a lot in Boreal forests and painted them extensively as an artist. This also was a part of his decision to paint with watercolours.
“The explorers who mapped out those areas used watercolours and that was a part of my interest in them,” he said.
It was not until 1975 that Alan and Audrey started painting together and while they have done other art shows, this is their first big retrospective.
“It is pretty exciting, this is the first time we’ve tried anything on this scale,” said Alan. “We had no idea how much work it would be.”
Both Alan and Audrey are elected members of the Society of Canadian Artists.
