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Author: Travis Clarke

Travis Clarke- Canadian Digital Artist

Wendy Dewar Hughes

Posted on by Travis Clarke

Wendy Dewar Hughes began her professional art career in the 1980s, painting representational watercolour landscapes, portraits, and commissions. Gallery representation resulted in her art hanging in homes and businesses on three continents.

With a goal of reaching a wider audience with her art and design, Wendy created a line of stationery products that she sold wholesale to stores all over North America, plus Australia and the UK. She has licensed her artwork to other companies in the giftware industry for several years and during this time she also had a retail store. Wendy has also taught multiple art classes in drawing, watercolour painting, and ink and watercolour. Wendy is also a writer and has written and/or illustrated twenty-nine books, as well as coaching other authors.

Recently, Wendy branched into painting with acrylic paints on canvas, which she says is “a whole different world” to watercolours. Her style is primarily warm intimate scenes that suggest a story, many reflecting her love of village life in France, where she has lived, and welcoming interiors.

Rachel Kragh

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Rachel is a self-taught artist who is enamoured with soft pastels. She loves to paint “en plein air” and tries to capture light and movement in her work. She often paints landscapes but she also enjoys painting still life and floral subject matter.

Nancy Thygesen

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“Nancy Thygesen (BFA, MPS) is an artist, faith-based art therapist, movement specialist and inspiring speaker, sharing and teaching through the universal languages of art and movement. Her mission in therapy and creating art is to support and inspire that creative light that heals mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically.

Her work expresses an active searching out of the ‘thin places’, those thresholds where God seems particularly close to our world, and to create a portal for the viewer to meditate in those spaces.

Nancy’s photo encaustic paintings fuse layers of beeswax/resin medium with pan pastel, giving them an opaque mystery, creating a luminescence that bridges the natural world to the spiritual. Cold wax added to oil portrays this same rarified atmosphere in abstract landscape narratives. The barrier between heaven and earth is porous because the Lord, in His kindness, met a person there.

Nancy reconnected with her artist self in the journey of completing her masters in art therapy. With 25 years teaching movement and art expression, Nancy has facilitated art therapy with women in addictions recovery, sexual abuse and trauma, and cancer survivors. Her mission in therapy and creating art is to create a safe space for healing mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. She is a facilitator for the Caring for the Wounded Heart trauma healing program (traumahealinginstitute.org) and offers her own expressive arts workshops online and in person. She also is is a certified Pilates teacher, teaching both groups and privately.

She is a member of the Harrison Art Guild, has exhibited in Edmonton (NOA Gallery), Abbotsford, and Harrison Hot Springs (Ranger Gallery) and is grateful to receive commissions. Her collaborations in Alberta )Edmonton) include: Grey Nuns and Royal Alexandra Hospitals, NOA Art Gallery, Cross Cancer Institute, ADEARA (Women’s Residential Addiction Recovery) BC: Pearl Life Renewal Ministry, Chilliwack.

Nancy married her soulmate Rick in 2013, has two amazing married adult children and grandmother to seven (doing art with them as soon as they could hold a crayon). Rick and Nancy migrate between Edmonton and Harrison Mills, BC. Her happy place is on a paddle board on the Harrison River.
“

Stanislava Smiešková

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“Stanislava Smiešková is an artist in Chilliwack, British Columbia.
She grew up painting and sculpting in Slovakia, where she showed her work in exhibitions.
Stanislava paints and draws in a variety of mediums: oil, acrylic, watercolour, pencil and pastel. She likes to capture the details in every scene and to use light to its full effect in landscapes. She sculpts in wood and makes statues in Paverpol.
Stanislava is a certified Paverpol instructor and welcomes new students interested in the technique.
“

Hussein Rostum

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“My recent paintings in British Columbia, exhibited at several venues in the Fraser Valley and the Greater Vancouver area, explore impressionistic abstract motifs while retaining a grounding sense of balance and structure.

My goal as an artist is to create colourful paintings that intrigue, engage, and inspire. I hope that my work can help motivate people to make art an enjoyable part of their lives, as it is in mine.

For me, my exhibition work conjures the freedom and joy of my continuing journey in art.”

Maaike VanderMeer

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“Maaike VanderMeer is a painter. is an emerging artist who works in acrylics, watercolours and cyanotype to combine the familiar with the fantastical in vibrant abstract art. She incorporates place into her art, using foraged plants as prints in the background of acrylic paintings and creating her own inks.
Her work has been purchased by individuals in the U.S., Germany, Canada and Uganda. Last year, Maaike spent five months taking her art to farmers markets across the Fraser Valley.
Maaike is a writer as well as a painter, and is intrigued by how art can tell a story in a single frame. She is the Art and Development manager for Christian Courier, an independent Canadian paper. She publishes a weekly lyric essay, along with original art, on Substack at: www.abrokentulip.substack.com. “

Vincent Mikuska

Posted on by Travis Clarke

My work is an integration and re-imagining of elements of my natural and suburban surroundings. I am traversing the boundaries between more and less representational images.
Form, space and colour are used to create images that also use the concept of time and memory.

After my last exhibition I decided to revisit some of the work. As I painted over them I began to develop rectangular areas that lay adjacent to or under the area of main focus. These became “paintings in a painting”. There were traces of what had been there previously, augmenting the underpainting and giving rise to further areas. The “paintings in the painting” are constituent parts of the memory experience. They can be a portion of the memory or an addition to it. There are many horizontals due to these rectangles. They are both physical and metaphorical.

The piling accumulation of these images becomes a reference to memory. Memories do not exist as a photograph, a moment in time. As they evolve and accumulate further experiences, they become blurred and layered. This is episodic memory, which is driven by emotion not details.

Stephanie A. N. Gerbrandt

Posted on by Travis Clarke

At Studio Gerbrandt, we create spiritually-themed art that inspires renewal and reflection. Each piece is thoughtfully curated with eternal themes, designed to serve as the focal point of your sacred space—a gateway to peace and clarity in the midst of life’s busyness. By meditating on these artworks, you’ll find strength, encouragement, and a renewed sense of purpose to carry forward.

Specializing in mixed media and lenticular art, we explore multidimensionality to craft works that evoke a profound sense of eternity. Our art transforms spaces into sanctuaries, continually reminding you of life’s deeper meaning and ultimate aim. Let Studio Gerbrandt guide you toward reflection, renewal, and revival.

Michèle Touchette

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Michele Touchette Curriculum Vitae

Born and raised in Vancouver, BC, Michèle studied Interior Design at Douglas College and Fine Arts at the University of Regina, UBC, Emily Carr and Ottawa Schools of Art, as well as Kenderdine Campus, Emma Lake, Saskatchewan. 
She was the Artist-in-Residence with the Saskatchewan Arts Board and L’Association Francophone Canadienne de Régina for one year, and with the Regina Catholic Schoolboard for 6 years. She taught DLC 250 (Development of Language and Culture 250) and Introductory, Intermediate and Advanced Water Media classes at the University of Regina, the Regina Public and Catholic School Boards, The Saskatchewan Board of Education, as well as community colleges and associations throughout the province of Saskatchewan for 10 years. In 1999, Michèle moved to Vancouver BC, and was a guest lecturer at UBC – Critical Studies in Sexuality. She practiced and taught art in her studio full time until 2007. 
Ms. Touchette has had numerous solo, juried and group exhibitions on international, provincial and regional levels. Michèle is the founder of the group Art x 9, a Canadian artists’ collective, and the CBC/SRC Radio Art Auction “Operation Christmas Card” (an annual project benefitting the food banks of Saskatchewan and the CARFAC Artist’s Distress Fund). She is one of the founding members of the committee that conceived, developed and produced the annual Seattle Erotic Art Festival. Both projects are highly successful, and are ongoing. Michèle has juried a number of art exhibitions and has earned many awards. She has been published several times and is listed in the prestigious Dictionary of Western Canadian Francophone Artists and Authors. 
Michèle works primarily as a painter/printmaker and is known for her unique style and favorite subject matter, sheep. Recently she has been expanding the “flock” in her same style as well as exploring new fun ways to express herself creatively. 
In 2009, she relocated to Key West, Florida, bought a waterfront home and was extremely active in the arts community there. In 2020, she decided to make the move back to the Pacific Northwest a permanent one, and purchased an oceanfront home and studio in Birch Bay, Washington and a tiny home and studio in Harrison Mills, BC.
Michele founded the Harrison Art Guild in Harrison Mills in 2021, where she and the very active group of artists from the local area participate in several exhibitions annually, and meet weekly to share the energies and passions of being a practicing artist. 
Ms. Touchette’s work can be found in private and corporate collections throughout the world or by contacting one of the galleries that represent her.  www.micheletouchettegallery.com

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