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this page Metamorphism of Geologists – Trained Geoscientists … now Exhibiting Artists An art exhibition that ran this summer (June 29 to July 30) at the Agnes Jamieson Gallery in Minden, Ontario, entitled Earth Patterns, has to have been a first! All of the works on display - huge colourful “geological” oil paintings juxtaposed against exquisite artistic outcrop photographs - are by two individuals who took Optical Petrology, studied Structural Geology and went to Field School just like the rest of us! The works on display were by trained geologists turned visual artists. Gary Blundell and John Etches, both of whom have B.Sc.’s in geoscience, are artists. They recently put their very different, but very complimentary, work together in a joint show under the banner, Earth Patterns. You may have been lucky enough to have taken this exhibition in, if your summer travels brought you to the Lindsay - Haliburton area. Gary has been painting for a number of years and his works hang in private collections all across Canada. Engineering and other consulting firms have purchased his paintings for office displays. A recent example of Gary’s work was chosen as a centre-piece for the atrium of the new Technology and Earth Sciences Building at the University of Waterloo. As Gary explained to me, he was always fascinated by natural patterning and colouration in rock formation as he studied geology - from the scale of hand specimens to road cuts - be it cleavage or fracture, folding or fabric, weathering or oxidation. He said he has always painted, but it took a while to make the break with geoscience as a livelihood and also to develop an artistic style that would enable him to capture nature’s patterns with meaning and life on canvas. Gary’s unusual technique involves scoring and gouging the surface of large thick sheets of plywood to create a sense of relief and texture. This tooled surface then becomes the canvas for an abstract work in oil, using interference of strong colour contrasts.
Cote Sauvage - Oil on gauged 40’’x48” Gary Blundell, 2004
John Etches, by contrast, is a newcomer to presenting his work in a public arena. A long time amateur photographer, this was John’s first exhibition. Over the years, he has photographed extensively in Vietnam, Belize, Honduras, the Canadian Arctic, and in Arizona and Utah. His works are both close up and distance shots of geological phenomena such as: ptygmatic folding and transformation textures in Grenville gneisses; Liesegang Rings interfering with cross-bedding in orange Navajo sandstone. John, who has a day job as a marketing specialist in the Ontario Parks Division of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, told me he has been an avid geo-photographer from way back when he spent a few years in mineral exploration bedrock mapping claims in the high Arctic and in central New Brunswick. His photos today, however, are not for information purposes; they are to capture natural rock features as artistic subjects using photographic technique alone. John told me that all of his photos are natural colour, with none of the touching and tweaking that is so common in digital photography today.
- John Etches, 2005. (Images © 2005 John Etches)
Asked why they chose to do a joint exhibition, Gary explained that having John’s real photos of outcrop patterns in the same room as his abstracts help to allow the public to understand that the roots of all his work are in geological reality. And for John, having his work together with Gary’s brings his photos alive as works of art, in addition to being beautifully taken pictures of rock phenomena. An interesting duo taking geoscience well beyond professional practice! For those interested in learning more about their work. John’s website is www.earthimage.ca; Gary’s is www.hotspurstudio.com. |
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