www.markpenneygallery.com

Marla Thirsk Art, Cover of WineTrails Magazine

Wine Trails Magazine, Summer 2010 Issue features Marla Thirsk’s Art on it’s cover. Just inside the cover is explained the following:

Marla Thirsk was born in Vancouver, BC and showed an early aptitude for art by drawing in the cover pages of her father’s university books at the age of 2. Her Art career really started when she decided to change her life around by believing in herself and following her life-long dream of being a professional artist. Since then she has created award winning posters for the Whale Festival, Edge to Edge Marathon, Ukee Days and just finished one for the Tofino Food and Wine Festival. She has designed logos and costumes and done set design. She was president of the the Pacific Rim Arts Society for six years running. She has painted every mural in her town of Ucluelet but one and continues to be a major figure in the planning of local Art Events. She has worked in all mediums but oil. Her works have sold and gone worldwide. She proudly wears the title of “Towns’s Artist”.

The original acrylic paintings in the theme of the Tofino Food and Wine Poster on this issue’s cover are the newest venture for her. They are inspired by old photos ofher mother from the 30′s to early 60′s and old french postcards of the 1800′s and early 1900′s. with these new works she feels she has finally found her own unique style. for a more comprehensive look at her work, please visit her website (www.marlathirsk.com) or see her work at Cedar Corner Gallery in Tofino and Mark Penney Gallery in Ucluelet.

The magazine is widely circulated in BC and can be found at most BC Liquor and Beer & Wine Stores, the painting was created specifically for Tofino’s 8th annual Food and Wine Festival which ran June 4th-6th.

“Paul should be congratulated on a book which gives an authoritative, overdue account of an extraordinary man.” ~ Lord Montigue of Beaulieu (in the forward of ‘The Man Who Supercharged Bond’, a biography of Amherst Villiers authored by Paul Kenny)

The extraordinary story of artist Charles Churchill Villiers’ father Charles Amherst Villiers has recently been published. I know Charles to be immeasurably proud of his father’s accomplishments, and of him as an artist and painter.

Amherst made a profound break from rocketry and engineering, to pursue painting; his very first portrait was of young Charles, the portrait sitting resulted in the two spending a great deal of time together and seems to have influenced Charles deeply in his identity as an artist.

Ian Flemming was a close friend and neighbor to the Villiers family. In 1962 Flemming commissioned a portrait which appeared in a limited edition of ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’. A young Charles’ childhood stories are credited to the formation of ‘Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang’ the children’s book, and later hollywood movie, which is undeniably based on the Villiers Family; Charles, sister Jane, their father the inventor and of course the fabled race car rebuilt as a flying car.

Amherst Villiers and his son, Charles in the restored Bently

At age 11, under his father’s guidance, Charles began painstakingly restoration of a Villiers blown Bentley, that had been given to him by Flemming. The car upon it’s completion, won the Concourse D’ Elegance at Pebble Beach, California.

Amherst Villiers began began his career in design engineering by souping up Brescia Bugattis, he went on to develop Superchargers for Bentley and Rolls Royce. He designed the Napier-Campbell Bluebird in 1927. He left the group to work on a gyroscope design and to calculate a rocket trajectory to reach Mars, by that time Bluebird had broken the land speed record.

As a professional, portrait painter, he was known to take his artwork very seriously, pursuing it with a single minded determination. He studied under portrait painter Pietro Annigoni in Florence, and later worked on restoration of renaissance masterworks in a monastery in Majorca. As an artist himself, his son Charles studied painting under him in Spain.

Amherst Villiers paintings are very highly regarded; a portrait of Ian Flemming, along with a stunning portrait of legendary race-car driver, Graham Hill, are on loan to the National Portrait Gallery of London.

I’m excited and looking forward to reading this book. It’s available online at the official website www.themanwhosuperchargedbond.com

Pacific Rim Arts Society, is having a local Artists showing. ‘Wave Art Show’ runs October 26-27-28 (in the Harbour Lounge) at Weigh West Resort, 634 Campbell St., Tofino.

More…

Artist Ken Kirkby’s recently released biography, Ken Kirkby – A Painter’s Quest for Canada, has been garnering a lot of attention, a book signing in Calgary had just shy of 5000 people in attendance.
Ken says the book has sold out of the 1st printing, that it’s a best seller and that they’ve begun selling the second edition.
I had Ken bring by a few copies, he signed them here at the gallery.

A Painter’s Quest for Canada – Ken Kirkby

At this stage of my life all I wanted to do was go and live at my favourite place, a small village near a stream on the east coast of Vancouver Island. Most of all, I wanted to live an ordinary sort of life which had so far eluded me, a life where I could sleep when tired, eat when hungry, fly-fish whenever it pleased me and paint all those paintings that had become stored up in me like water behind a dam constructed by the events told in this book.”

Ken Kirkby has published a biographical account of his travels across the north, and of painting the largest canvas known; 12 foot x 153 foot long , Isumataq. Launch of the book will take place at Englishman River Gallery, in Parksville on Saturday September 12th  2009, noon ’til 4pm. I’ll extend my personal invitation to all of you.

Ken is a remarkable speaker, and a formidable painter. Ken’s works are represented here at Mark Penney Gallery, Ucluelet and at Englishman River Gallery, Parksville. The book is currently available online through it’s independent canadian publisher; Libros Libertad. I’ll be sure to bring in a few signed copies.

http://jwindh.wordpress.com/ http://twitter.com/jwindh

Jacqueline Windh is an exceptional photographer.

Jacqueline Windh  firmly believes that the message matters far more than the medium.  To that end, she conveys her ideas in a variety of ways and via a range of media: as an internationally published writer and photographer and as a radio broadcaster.  Her articles and photographs have been published as books, and in magazines and newspapers all over the world.  She has written and produced radio documentaries for CBC Radio, and works in other media including web and video.

She has been working as a fulltime freelance journalist since 2000, when she left her job as a geological consultant to the exploration and mining industry.  She has two geology degrees (B.Sc. Hons, McGill University, 1987; Ph.D. UWA, 1992), and is fluent in Spanish and manages quite fine in French, too.