Artist: Maggie Shepherd
Medium: Oil
Dimensions: 30" x 40"

Bidding on this artwork will take place at the Live Auction event, Friday, April 10. Tickets available at the link at dvsa.ca. Absentee bids can also be placed in advance – request a form at the school office or email bid@dvsa.ca.

About This Piece
I walk all year in the trails around Cootes Paradise in Hamilton and always enjoy the beauty of the seasonal shifts and bursts of life and colour. Walking in the North Shore Trails painted last fall, is an abstract interpretation of fleeting impressions of the forest atmosphere encountered as one passes through the trees.

Biography
I love using line, colour and light to create landscapes and still life. The forgiving and dramatic oil medium helps me to experiment and hunt for connections on the canvas, allowing the work to evolve in an abstract expressionist way. I like subject matter that challenges me and sparks new ways of seeing and constructing an image, always aiming to make a better painting. I work in painterly style, loose and spontaneous, my landscapes are often worked en plein air. Bonnard, Morandi and Matisse are some of the better-known artists whose work has helped me find freshness and beauty in the everyday. I spend a lot of time in nature. I collect information on-site and work on small sketches and as the shapes and patterns emerge, the fun and discipline is choosing which to enhance and which to edit out, it is this process stage of painting that I love so much when all the possibilities and options are vying for consideration. My work is currently available at Beckett Fine Art in Hamilton and Art and Light Gallery in SC, USA. Some of the places I have shown my work are the Canvas Gallery in Toronto, Carnegie Gallery, Gallery on the Bay, Burlington Arts Centre and AGH Art Rental and Sales. I have work in private and corporate collections in Canada and abroad. I am an alumnus of DVSA and have studied at the International School of Art in Umbria, Italy.