Recent History – 1999
Jan. 22, 1999 – By Mike Leschart, Daily News Staff
Inez Demuynck has experimented with nearly every form of conventional artistic expression over the years — paintings, watercolors, sculpture, photography, printmaking — and her exhibition next week will demonstrate this. Hanging from the walls of the Dawson Creek Art Gallery will be the collected work of a lifetime, spanning generations.
The exhibit is aptly titled “A Life’s Journey”, as the works range from a painting Demuynck had done when she was six years old, to a silk-screen self-portrait she completed in 1968. Demuynck, naturally, has moved through various phases in her long artistic career. She’s experimented with impressionism, hard edge techniques and many other forms along the way.
Lately, shes been focusing on an art form she calls “creative painting” where realistic images are played with, and certain details are removed, creating a more stylized atmosphere.
“It can be an abstract form or it can be a play on realism,” she said. “I think it’s more exciting because realism is more obvious. I think it gives your work more sparkle.”
For example, she will create a watercolor that’s almost entirely realistic, but leave a few white spots where the eye would assume there should be colour. Also, certain details are left out that would enhance the realism of the scene.
Because the work comprises so many different styles, it is sometimes difficult to believe it was all produced by the same artist. Traditional nature scenes sit next to abstract mixtures of colours and shapes, which in turn sit next to carbon sketches of nudes, or hard-edge paintings made of nothing but straight lines. It is, truly, the work of a lifetime, and the 50 odd pieces represent the culmination of 40 years of work.
Demuynck, though, still finds her work fulfilling, and still teaches art and pottery classes. She has tried to retire in the past, but simply couldn’t stop creating art.
“I don’t think anyone retires from painting,” she said. “I have at times thought ‘well I’m just going to see if I can drop this,’ but I couldn’t do it.”