Crystal Beshara | Farmhouse Menagerie (The Teatime Tales) & Brandon McVittie | An ARCHIVE of SKIES

Crystal Beshara | Farmhouse Menagerie (The Teatime Tales) &
Brandon McVittie | An ARCHIVE of SKIES
Vernissage: Saturday, October 5 @ 3 – 5 pm
Show dates: October 5 – 19

Ottawa, September 18, 2024 - WALL SPACE GALLERY presents two solo painting exhibitions; Crystal Beshara’s “Farmhouse Menagerie (The Teatime Tales)” and Brandon McVittie’s “An ARCHIVE of SKIES”. Both exploring rural scenesandBeshara and McVittie both explore rural themes, they approach the history and nostalgia evoked by specific epochs and the ethos of country living from distinct perspectives.

Crystal Beshara (Ottawa) – In “Farmhouse Menagerie (The Teatime Tales)”, Crystal Beshara fuses her fine art background with her fondest childhood memories in portraits of farm animals. From regal ewes to clumsy Highland cows, Beshara delves into allegorical tales of rural life and ideas of urban sprawl with a deep slice of nostalgia. Beshara’s oil paintings and watercolours feature many of the animals that populated her own childhood home growing up on a farm, infused with inspiration from Beatrix Potter and Richard Scary. Across this body of works, Beshara humanizes the animals who inhabit rural spaces, flipping the script on human sprawl and allowing them to invade our home spaces.

Brandon McVittie (Ottawa) – Brandon McVittie is widely recognized for his landscape oil paintings that emulate an old world flavour in execution and palette. In his genre pieces, he explores mid 20th century inspirations while paying homage to the rendering style(s) of figures made fashionable by artists/illustrators from the era. He strives to incorporate his nostalgia for vintage sentiment in his painting; conveying the old as new again. The cottage scenes and vistas spanning this body of work are not specific places but rather inspired by traces of memories of Scotland, Ireland, the UK, and Canada. In creating and contriving scenes, each work stems from multiple references, including photos, sketches, and even earlier paintings newly revisited. McVittie paints to translate the spirit of places that he has visited onto canvas.