Come Paint Alberta is an artist-led community project promoting plein air painting in Alberta. With the support of Leighton Art Centre, Come Paint Alberta was planned and led by established plein air artists Louise Lacey-Rokosh, Laurie Aldridge and Theresa Williams, who hosted paint outs in five iconic Alberta locations. They painted alongside the participants and collaborated on a series of large scale acrylic paintings, each completed on location. These five pieces anchor the exhibition.

Paint out participants were offered the opportunity to submit their work and some of the submissions will be juried into the exhibition. The pieces – created over three months from early April to early July – truly capture the essence of Plein Air in Alberta, including a rawness that comes from the artists’ exposure to insects, dust, wind, and wildly variable temperatures. 

PUBLIC RECEPTION
Please join us on September 10, 2022, between 2 and 4 pm, to celebrate Come Paint Alberta, together with Night Lights: The Wonder of the Northern Lights. Artists will be in attendance.

Exhibition launches August 27, 2022.

The northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis, are natural light displays in the sky. They are beautiful, magical, and rare to witness.

In Night Lights: The Wonder of the Northern Lights, Billie Rae Busby presents a new body of abstract landscapes to interpret her fascination with the aurora borealis. Using her signature painting style—a precise, hard-edge painting technique and colour theory—the artworks capture the magic, beauty and energy of this natural phenomenon. 

The series of acrylic paintings draw inspiration from the serendipity of viewing the northern lights in person during an artist residency at the Banff Centre in October 2021. Billie Rae is enthralled by the quandary of the northern lights, even if the science and data point to suitable conditions.  “To me, the aurora represents opportunity, uncertainty and potential. Their movement and colours are fleeting, unpredictable moments and we could miss the whole wondrous spectacle if we are not paying attention.”

Billie Rae Busby is an award-winning Calgary contemporary visual artist who has been exploring hard-edge abstraction through our landscape since 2007.  In her paintings, she strives to unearth memories of ordinary places with extraordinary possibilities.

PUBLIC RECEPTION
Please join us on September 10, 2022, between 2 and 4 pm, to celebrate Night Lights: The Wonder of the Northern Lights, together with Come Paint Alberta. Artists will be in attendance.

Exhibition launches August 27, 2022.