JOURNEY/IDENTITY
Colleen McTigue + Sarah Schulz
Opening Reception: Saturday 17 August 6PM – 10PM
On Display 17- 30 August 2019
Dennis Tourbin Members Gallery at NAC
Colleen McTigue lives and works in St. Catharines. She has been a member of the Willow Arts Community since June 2018. Primarily self-taught, she began pursuing visual arts in March of 2018 as a way of filling time due to being on disability leave for major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. Since joining the Willow, she has explored a number of different styles and mediums, and has increased her skill and confidence as an artist. Her art often explores LGBT issues through a social justice lens, although she also explores the beauty of nature and sometimes combines the two.
Sarah Schulz is primarily a self-taught artist, born and raised in the Niagara Region. Currently she divides her focus between professional commissioned portraits and a personal exploration of themes surrounding mental health and recovery.
In this series, Sarah strives to integrate what she finds easy to create professionally (detail) with what is often difficult to demonstrate artistically (emotion). Her focus was to portray thefragmentation of mind, body, and heart that often occurs as a result of trauma and deep internal struggle. “Pathway Through the Fracture” encourages an understanding of the ability to accept what we label as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ qualities of our “self” without trying to pass judgement, separate, or remove one from the other; to see that both are often intrinsically linked.
About the Artist in Residence program:
Two Willow member artists were provided three months of studio space at Niagara Artists Centre (NAC) Studios to develop a body of work. They were supported, mentored, and paid professional artist fees to teach and exhibit their work thanks to a City of St. Catharines Cultural Investment Program Grant.
