Selections from the Permanent Collection and New Acquisitions

On display until February 8, 2025

The Agnes Jamieson Gallery will be displaying a selection of artwork by André Lapine, A.R.C.A. (1866-1952), as well as several new acquisitions, until February 8, 2025.  All pieces are from the Gallery’s permanent collection.

Andreas Christian Gottfried (André) Lapine was a Latvian-born painter who emigrated to Canada in 1905. He moved to Minden in the 1940s and lived out the final years of his life there. Lapine was affectionately referred to as The Gentle Cavalier for his realistic depictions of horses.  He was renowned for his drawing skills and attention to detail in his illustrative work, as well as in his oil and watercolour pieces. Lapine's artwork frequently graced the covers and pages of the Toronto Star Weekly, The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star.  He was a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, the Graphic Arts Club, the Toronto Arts and Letters Club and a founding member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour. In 1919, Lapine was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. The Agnes Jamieson Gallery is fortunate to have over 100 pieces of his work in their collection. Lapine’s work can also be found at the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario, as well as in many private collections.

The Agnes Jamieson Gallery will be displaying a selection of artwork by André Lapine, A.R.C.A. (1866-1952), as well as several new acquisitions, until February 8, 2025.  All pieces are from the Gallery’s permanent collection.

The Land Between - Archie Stouffer Elementary School 2^nd Annual Student Art Exhibit

February 13 to March 15, 2025 (Artist reception to be held on February 22, 2025)

Our 2^nd annual Archie Stouffer student art exhibit will celebrate and reflect the rich cultural and natural heritage of The Land Between (TLB), the vital and diverse landscape we call home. 

The Township of Minden Hills is part of the traditional territory of the Michi Saagiig and Chippewa Nations, collectively known as the Williams Treaties First Nations, which are Curve Lake, Rama, Hiawatha, Alderville, Scugog Island, Beausoleil and Georgina Island First Nations. We acknowledge a shared presence of Indigenous nations throughout the area, and recognize its original, Indigenous inhabitants as the stewards of its lands and waters since time immemorial.  TLB was identified as an important landscape in this territory, spanning Parry Sound and Orillia to the Ottawa valley, and sits "between" the Canadian Shield and St. Lawrence Lowlands, harbouring species and features from north and south, but also ones that are unique. TLB is a last stronghold for many wildlife and habitats in southern Ontario, supporting 59 federally listed Species-at-Risk and iconic yet declining wildlife like loon, bear and moose.

Thank you to the Minden Hills Cultural Centre Foundation for their donation of $250 to purchase art supplies for the students.  Awards of Recognition, selected by our jury of local artists, will be handed out in several categories at the Student Artist Reception on Saturday, February 22 from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.

We’re Still Talking – Nadine Papp, Wendy Wood, Sandi Luck

March 20 to May 10, 2025 (Reception to be held on March 22)

This exhibit is about relationships. About three friends and fibre artists that travelled together to a small remote island for ten days to pursue their individual and joint artistic vision.  Their experimentation with materials and plant dyes will be showcased in this unique group exhibition. 

The Artists:

Nadine Papp is a fibre artist working with a variety of materials that help her create different pieces of art. Her love of all things natural inspire the cloth she stitches, dyes, cuts and forms. Her focus is on repetitive stitch which is recognizable in her works.

Wendy Wood is a multidisciplinary artist, who has been creating art her whole life. She started as an electrical draftsperson, and the love of using a pencil led to a career in landscape painting. She was introduced to crochet at a very young age and that appreciation of fiber crept back into her life in woven form.  After years of painting and weaving, the two very different art forms have begun to merge into Wendy’s work; a combination of colour and texture, paint and fiber, an exploration that is just beginning.

Sandi Luck is a fibre artist residing in Haliburton. Her current practice explores themes of fantastical nature through embellished felt jewellery, natural dyes and botanical prints. She employs bright colours and multiple layers of stitch, beading and natural fibre to create texture and whimsy. Her work has been featured in Fiber Arts Now Magazine, Worldwide Colors of Felt and other publications in addition to many local Haliburton exhibitions, most recently at Fleming College Faculty Exhibition 2024

Mountain Lake at a Glance (The Hidden Nature of Paint) – Gord Peteran

May 15 to July 12, 2025 (Reception to be held on May 17, 2025)

Gord Peteran’s family has summered at Mountain Lake just north of Minden since 1934. While Gord is known as a sculptor, he has been plein-air painting Mountain Lake for the past 40 years.  Until now, this has remained a private affair, separate from his professional career as an artist. Accumulating slowly over the years, these small oil sketches have performed much like a secret graphic diary.  What is unusual about this undertaking is that almost all 400 oil sketches are of the same view - true north from the family cottage.  His exhibition at the Agnes Jameson Gallery, will be the first time these personal paintings have been presented publicly. 

“The light changes constantly so I work quickly to fuse an hour of time with a place of the heart, attempting to document not only the trees, clouds and waves, but also the ghosts that collect by a lake.”  G.P.

The Artist:

We welcome back Toronto sculptor Gord Peteran to the Agnes Jamieson Gallery.  Gord has lectured and exhibited extensively throughout North America.  His work is held in many private and public collections.  Locally, he created the red entranceway for the Haliburton School of Art + Design and has a sculpture in the Haliburton Sculpture Forest.

While a professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University for over 25 years, Peteran has also taught at The California College of Arts, Sheridan College School of Arts and Crafts, and the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI.

Gord has been the recipient of numerous Government Arts Council grants and awards throughout his career, including the Jean A. Chalmers National Arts Award. Three exhibition catalogues have been published on his work.

 Of Light and Life – Michael Dumas

July 17 to September 13, 2025 (Reception to be held on July 19, 2025)

My exhibit, featuring several new pieces, provides a glimpse into the processes involved, from observational sketches and comprehensive preliminary drawings that may or may not lead anywhere beyond the motivating interest that inspired them.  Overlaying this procedure is the matter of materials, the choice of medium, the support it will be applied to, and a sense of just what combinations are most sympathetic to the envisioned image. So goes an endless thread running through the work, joining observation, subject matter, emotional response, and the physicality of mediums.” M.D.

The Artist:

Michael Dumas was born and raised in the small town of Whitney, Ontario, near Algonquin Park. Exposure and familiarity with the wilderness and its creatures are reflected in his art.  Michael worked for a time as a ranger in Algonquin and has continued his connection to the Park by accompanying research teams on projects such as the winter bear den census. Michael’s subject matter also includes rural themes and people; the common denominator within all his art being an intimate connection based on personal experience.

Haycock: Like Father, Like Daughter – Maurice H. Haycock, Kathy M. Haycock, Karole Haycock Pittman, Erika Pittman

September 18 to November 15, 2025 (Reception to be held on September 20, 2025)

Inspired by Jackson’s artistic interpretation of the Arctic he had come to love, Maurice began painting. The two artists became steadfast painting partners for thirty years, travelling extensively across Canada and the North. Both of Maurice’s daughters (Karole and Kathy) and his granddaughter (Erica) became artists, powerfully influenced by Maurice’s vision. They have all travelled widely to paint as well; with Maurice, individually, and together, creating a Canadian artistic lineage.

This special family exhibit contains many works from private collections not publicly displayed before. It is a rich visual narrative of the changing Canadian landscape from the 1940’s to the present, of a family truly shaped by Canada’s geography, and of how a powerful sense of place and emotion can be expressed in the personal brushwork, palette and style of each of the artists.

The Artists:

Maurice Hall Haycock was a well-known Canadian artist and an important figure in artistically interpreting the Canadian Arctic and its history. It is estimated he travelled more than 500,000 km throughout northern Canada by sea, air, tracked vehicle, canoe, umiaq, dog team and on foot personally exploring remote lands and painting what he saw.  

Over the course of his fifty-year career as an artist, Haycock completed more than 5,000 on-site oil sketches and hundreds of larger works, documenting historic sites, remote landscapes, farms and communities across Canada.  Haycock’s distinguished career as a geologist/mineralogist for the Canadian Mines Branch offered him a unique lens he used as an artist. He had the exceptional ability to understand and feel the skeletal foundation and the geology of the landscape to create paintings with both structural integrity and a compassionate narrative.