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“Dramatic moments help us remember beauty and and we sometimes wonder why we keep forgetting it. Sometimes beauty is that unpredictable. A threshold we had never noticed before opens suddenly and the mystery comes alive around us and we realize how the Earth is full of concealed beauty.”

— John O’Donohue, Beauty, the Invisible Embrace

In this Irish poet’s tale, he is walking with a friend along an immense lake, where the far off horizon is a blue daze in the meeting of water and sky. The glassy calm of the lake is suddenly shattered when a huge cormorant splits the surface of the lake and rises up as if from the underworld, opens its ragged black wings, wet and gleaming, to command everything to itself in that one singular moment.

I often feel the constant call of the trees, the prairies, the mountains and rivers and the Alberta skies. The invitation to come and stay awhile. Many times in my distractible brain, I do not answer the call.

So it was very much an honor and a gift when exhibition curator Amy Loewan invited me to join a very wonderful, expressive and passionate group of 10 artists — her more recent students in her Watercolour Techniques class within the University of Alberta Extension Visual Arts program. Our task: to embrace the beautiful in the world and to allow for it to take us to new thresholds in our lives. For it to inspire us in our own fundamental need to create visual art.

We have in common Amy’s gentle introduction to the potential of watercolour and her quiet encouragement for us to also find our avenues of expression beyond the technique. The group now meets regularly, including online discussions during the more sequestered times of Covid. There is a constant feeling of fresh curiosity. We have a delight in our fellow artists’ explorations and a spirit of openness and encouragement. We take away so many inspirations each time we meet. We keep each other going in our art practice, something that has not always been a given in the Covid years.

To help us unify our efforts we began with the very deep-rooted ideas about beauty in John O’Donohue’s book Beauty: the Invisible Embrace. So many truths emerged about the essence of beauty in our world and the urgent call in our times to slow ourselves and experience reverence in our human relationships and in the natural world.

I am very grateful to the Edmonton Arts Council and the City of Edmonton for supporting this exhibition and to the Art Gallery of Alberta for opening space for us to share our findings.

Amy Loewan, RCA, Curator

Artists: Brenda Heine, Misty Ring, Brenda Raynard, Pam St Laurent, Cheryl Moskaluk, Shannon O’Blenes, Ingrid Peterson, Sheila Greer, Linda Vaudan, Sheilah Kelly, Lucy Rachnyski