The Artist Herself

Photo: Contributed - Library and Archives Canada

While today’s “selfies” are everywhere, in days gone by, self-portraits were made solely by artists. This is easy for us to forget with our current over-saturation of images. Could historical artists ever have imagined self-portraits being so easy to make, and available to everyone?

In contrast, the works in this new ground-breaking exhibition, are rare and unique. There is a tremendous range and variety of self-portraiture in the new exhibition at the Kelowna Art Gallery. Over fifty works of art by forty Canadian artists, all of them women, are featured. The exhibition is entitled, The Artist Herself: Self-Portraits by Canadian Historical Women Artists and will be on view to visitors from January 23 to April 3, 2016. None of the works have ever been shown in Kelowna before.
 
The earliest pieces in the show date from the eighteenth century (for example a watercolour painting by Elizabeth Simcoe from about 1792) and the most recent works are from the early 1960s, which include a drawing by Christiane Pflug, and a painting from 1961 by Daphne Odjig. There is a great variety of materials in the exhibition, ranging from sculpture, drawings, photographs and paintings, to a painted china brooch and a painted metal biscuit tin, and quilts and samplers. The curators of the exhibition decided to be open-minded as to what constituted a self-portrait, so there is a wide variety of approaches evident to considering and exploring the self.
 
A stunning piece that is predicted to become a new favourite Canadian historical painting for Kelowna gallery-goers is the five-foot-wide Canoe Manned by Voyageurs Passing a Waterfall, from 1869, by Frances Anne Hopkins.
 
The exhibition is accompanied by a beautiful thick, full-colour catalogue, with an essay on each artist. The Artist Herself: Self-Portraits by Canadian Historical Women Artists is organized and circulated by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. The exhibition was curated by Alicia Boutilier and Tobi Bruce.
 
An opening reception to celebrate this exhibition will be held on Friday, January 22, 2016, from 7 to 9 pm, at the Kelowna Art Gallery. This is a free event, open to Gallery members and guests, by invitation.
 
The next day there will be a talk by the exhibition’s curators Alicia Boutilier and Tobi Bruce entitled Adventures in Curating Canadian Art. It is scheduled for Saturday, January 23, at 1 pm. This talk is free and open to the public.