Artist Demonstrations

Jen has spent her life exploring various facets of the arts and embraces them as part of who she is. As a youth she spent much of her time playing musical instruments and learning traditional crafts from her grandparents (and anyone else who would teach her). From the time she was a young adult she has travelled to dance throughout the United States and Canada with Forest City Morris and Sword, and also sings in the Wassail! choir, focusing on traditional Christmas songs from over a century ago. She dabbled in photography before learning how to make stained glass, which led her to attend Sheridan College for their Craft and Design program. There, she fell in love with glass and ceramics, in their many forms, and specialized her studies in flameworked and kiln cast glass. 

She has since worked with and learned from various glass and ceramic artists, suppliers and teachers. Her own studio was recently established at her home, where she can often be found for long hours at a time.  

Jen is passionate and enthusiastic about spreading the joy of the arts, and as such she is a past volunteer for Glass Art Association of Canada, past representative of Fusion: the Ontario Clay and Glass association, as well as the London Stained Glass Guild. After Jen moved to the South Huron region, she was invited to be a part of Art aRound Town, of which she is a current member. 

She is excited to be a part of the South Huron Arts Centre as she truly believes in bringing community together through the arts.

Jen V Glass Design

Originally from Kent County, Marion Anderson now makes her home and studio in New Dundee. She studied Visual Arts at Windsor University later completing a Masters of Education at University Western Ontario, London.

Her diverse portfolio shows expertise in a wide range of mediums including clay sculpture, watercolour, acrylic and oil painting as well as the ease with which she moves from florals to landscapes in subject matter. This fluidity is due to the artist’s thirty plus years as a Visual Arts teacher/department head.

Anderson’s unique mixed media technique is constantly evolving over time. She works in series, completing a suite of paintings to express a concept or idea. Heavily textured, each piece is rendered in a limited palette, suggesting a unique visual experience for the viewer’s interpretation. One exploration simply leads to another!

Please join Marion Anderson on Saturday afternoon, May 3rd, for a large canvas acrylic landscape painting demonstration. Marion will start with texturing a canvas, then move on to the underpainting. The progress on this intuitive style of landscape painting is fun to watch. Using a limited palette, she works up her composition, being guided by what happens when the painting and the textures talk to one another. Grab a seat and join the us for this highly educational and entertaining few hours.

https://aldercreekstudio.ca/

Show Floor, entry is with a regular ticket for Paint Ontario
May 4th, 12:00 to 4:00 p.m.

There will be easels available if you want to join in.

Elaine and Layne discovered Paint Ontario in 2018 as exhibitors and were so impressed with the entire experience that they have returned every year since as both exhibitors and demonstrators. Among other accolades won at Paint Ontario, Layne’s acrylic won 2019’s Wildlife Choice Award and Elaine won First Place in our portrait category another year. We are so honoured to have these two artists as an integral part of our show year after year. They both impress gallery audiences with their demonstrations.

Elaine and Layne will be demonstrating the art of drawing a portrait from life, demystifying the complexity of the human form with methods of sight, size and proportional measurement. For the curious and adventurous observers, a few supplies will be available so participants can also try their hand in life drawing.

Learn more about the work of these two talented artists:

View Elaine’s portfolio here.

View Layne’s portfolio here.

Robert Pointer, originally from Cambridge, Ontario, is currently living and painting in Grey Highlands. His art career was launched 50 years ago with a purchase award at an exhibition. He followed that by pursuing a B.A. in Fine Art and later a 25-year teaching career. In the last twenty years he has explored each of the traditional genres of figurative art: landscape, still life, portrait, figure, animal. He did this to explore and extend his visual vocabulary. His primary medium is acrylic paint on canvas, preferring it to oil paint primarily for its quick drying properties.

Robert Pointer often uses visual references that he has photographed. He will jump in, sketching in paint directly on the surface and building in layers. He believes that artwork requires clear content and meaning with a symbolic underpinning, and that the materials speak as an equal partner in the artwork.

He is active in the local art scene, teaching from his studio and various workshops, exhibiting as a member of the Federation of Canadian Artists (Toronto Chapter), and with the Blue Mountain Foundation for the Arts in Collingwood. He was recently awarded additional accolades for his painting.

Jean, originally from PEI, moved back to Ontario from North Vancouver, BC, in 2015. Her work has been exhibited at Paint Ontario since 2017.  Jean was awarded Grand Prize 2018 and Sponsor Choice awards in 2020 ,2021 and Mayors Choice in 2022.

Painting was not a priority while she attended classes at Beal and Western. Her main interests were sculpture and printmaking. Through these practices she learned the principles of design which can be applied to all art forms.

Later her interest in painting began to develop into a more intuitive and expressionist style. “I believe my art needs to go farther than trying to produce a photo-likeness of a subject. I try to capture the essence of my subjects. This involves experimenting, taking risks, changing styles and evolving to find my own way of expressing and challenging myself.”

Grand Bend artist Jean Taylor describes herself as a “tree painter.” Trees are the subject of most of her work but she continues to experiment in other areas and mediums.

She begins her paintings in an abstract way to establish composition, line, shape and colour. then brings her work to completion by working in layers through a loose expressionist style. She is constantly adding and editing as she creates the painting.

As a child growing up and living along the shores of the Great Lakes, I spent many hours beach-combing driftwood and rocks looking at the beauty in each piece. Later in life becoming a metal worker allowed me to bring these all together to create one of a kind pieces of art. There is beauty in nature and sometimes it just needs to be put together.

I like to create mixed media art that doesn’t place restrictions on you. There is something about wood and steel that seems to lend them a kind of soul.

Janice Cuckovic is a retired educator who spent her career in Windsor, Ontario, where she and her husband Petar, also an educator, raised their two daughters. Upon retirement they moved to Port Franks, where Janice has immersed herself in the creative community.

Janice learned the art of creating pysanky – traditional Ukrainian eggs – in her teens and has taken it up again in earnest over the last two years leading workshops and donating dozens of her creations to help raise funds for Ukraine. She honours her Ukrainian grandparents who emigrated to Canada from the small village of Sosnitza and is very grateful for the opportunity to share this tradition.

“Writing eggs using the traditional method requires patience and skill, but the results are stunning!”

Astra Nams has exhibited and demoed at Paint Ontario for years and has been fortunate enough to  win an award every year. As a Plein Air artist, she will be demonstrating outdoors, capturing a fleeting moment working in acrylics. Her work is lively and colourful. Astra has travelled throughout Ontario painting and competing in Plein Air competitions throughout and has been honoured to have won at each one.

Astra is happy to be back at Paint Ontario, as this is a unique and special event for any artist to attend.