From: EDMONTON JOURNAL, December 21, 2007, page F7
Save the environment, one painting at a time
The Four Outside Views exhibit at the
McMullen Gallery is happily doing double
duty.
This expansive show of 45 paintings
created by four Alberta artists is an energetic
attempt to document some of southern
Alberta’s most beautiful vistas. It’s also a
prime example of art as environmental
advocacy.
In particular, show curator and participant
Pam Wilman is advocating that the Castle
wilderness area (an unprotected stretch of
alpine lands abutting southern Alberta’s
Crowsnest Pass, roughly the region between
Pincher Creek and Waterton Lakes National
Park) is designated as a provincial park or
given some other form of environmental
protection.
“This is all about using art as an
educational and advocacy tool,” says the
Edmonton painter.
“I’m trying to make people more aware of
the wilderness areas in the province as well
as underlining how endangered these areas
are. Many of the vistas I’m painting no
longer exist in the form I’ve shown them
because these very fragile areas have been
developed.
“Ideally this region — the last major area
of the Alberta Rockies that has no protection
— should be made into a provincial park.
We need to look ahead and make sure we are
developing this area properly, which means
we make sure that we are leaving in things
like wildlife corridors like they did when
they were building up around Canmore.”
Wilman’s landscapes are joined by vistas
painted by Adeline Rockett, Sophia
Podryhula-Shaw and Donna Miller. All four
are members of the Alberta Society of
Artists (three are also U of Alumni) and all
have travelled to the Castle region to paint.
Pam Wilman and her artwork Lone Tree
(oil on canvas) at the McMullen Gallery
Wilman and Rockett go there every summer.
This particular exhibit highlights the
sublime beauty of this endangered area by
showing four different but engaging
painterly views of the same landscape.
Rockett says her paintings reflect a loose
and personal “emotional response” to these
alpine areas as opposed to a photorealistic
approach to painting landscapes. One of the
reasons the artist takes this more abstracted
and impressionist approach to the vista is
specifically to make sure that her profound
engagement can be shared by viewers of the
art.
“This is all about me editing down my
images to that feeling of the area, the very
emotion you might remember from driving
through the area yourself,” she says.
The foursome aim to engage as many
Albertans as possible with both the beauty
and the environmental message of the art.
This McMullen Gallery show is the end of
an artistic voyage that has already hit such
venues as the Grande Prairie Public Gallery,
the Fernie Arts Station, the Lebel Mansion
Gallery in Pincher Creek, the Crowsnest
Public Art Gallery and Edmonton’s
Glenrose Hospital.
Wilman says landscape painting is not just
about documenting the pristine and
traditionally beautiful. In her attempts to
capture the full diversity of the area, the
McMullen exhibit features images she
created inspired by the sprawling Lost Creek
Fire of 2003.
An avid hiker and skier, Wilman paints
most of her work outdoors, even when
creating large-scale oil paintings.