Category: News

Posted on

Osmosis – infuse your love of watercolour to the next generation

Our aim in 2019 is to share our love of and hopefully pass on our enthusiasm for  watercolour to the younger generation!

Adults involved must be members of IWS Canada. Please let us know if you wish to join.

For Youths who wish to take part, please e mail iwscanada@gmail.com and we will pair you up with a member in your area.

To encourage youth today to discover and explore watercolour painting, this year IWS Canada would like each of its members (leadership team included) to find a youth (or youths) with whom to become their watercolour ‘Buddy’ for the year.

What qualifies as a “youth”?

The “youth” designation could range from anyone old enough to first hold a brush, to a young adult below the age of 25.You could nurture a friend or family member, a young neighbour and/or someone who already loves art, but maybe just hasn’t had much experience with watercolour yet .

How much will it cost to participate?

Participation is free for both IWS Canada members and their youth buddies. The only cost is your time which we really value you giving.

Why is it important to take part?

You would be encouraging creativity, establishing or extending a skill set,and promoting social interaction, as well as passing on your enthusiasm for watercolour to the next generation.

Kids and young adults alike always bring a unique and refreshing outlook to any project.You may even find the next well known Canadian Watercolourist.

What do you have to do?

To make this even more enjoyable, the IWS leadership team is planning an activity a month that you could do starting in March so you don’t even need to come up with an idea; just meet with your buddy or buddies, join in, and have fun, too.

There will be 10 activities, one each month between March and December; not a huge time commitment, but time well spent.

To limit the expense, IWS Canada is working on providing some materials for the youth contingent of our plan. More details will follow over the course of the year.

So make someone’s day! Ask them to be your watercolour buddy.

Look for someone whose interest you could spark! Let’s pass on the baton…or brush, in this case!  And let’s get creative!

So:

  1. If you are a member of IWS Canada, find your buddy then let us know who the buddy is and how old they are.
  2. If you are a youth e mail us iwscanada@gmail.com and let us know you would like to take part
  3. Sit back and eagerly await our first month’s activity which we will send you at the beginning of March.
Posted on

Exhibit is Now at Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts

Our brave leader Ona Kingdon has been extremely busy these past few days, moving our exhibit out of Boynton House, re-organizing, and putting a selection of the paintings up at Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts  in the Foyer, Lower East Side and Upper East Side Galleries (click for HOURS), in anticipation of the concert which will be held there to close the exhibit on October 27.  Luckily she had some help from Tiina Price, Nola McConnan and Michelle Zikovitz for the physical work!

The paintings selected were those of the award winners, the invited guests, and people who contributed significantly to the event.

It’s lovely to see that no matter where we put this exhibit, whether it is in a heritage building with a homey, comfortable atmosphere, or in a modern, sophisticated theatre, the watercolour paintings look beautiful and add so much to the space they are in.  See for yourself!

Here is how the exhibit looked at Boynton House:

Just before the opening…

And here is how it looks at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts:

Posted on

Award Winners!

Two weeks ago during the opening celebrations of our A Symphony in Watercolour Exhibit, the awards given by the jurors Peter Marsh CSPWC, OSA, SCA, TWS, Anne McCartney CSPWC, AWS, TWSA and Rainbow Ze (youth juror) were announced.  We are so grateful for all of our sponsors and the numerous prizes that we were able to give out!

They are listed below – keep scrolling for a gallery of the winning images:

The CSPWC Grand Prize for Best in Show – Lana Privitera USA Some Wrinkles to Iron
The IWS Canada Youth Award – Yong-Ching , Jhang  Taiwan  Smile at the age of 19

Rockwell Art Supplies/Eureka Award 1 – Roy Tibbits   Canada Winter Sentinels
Rockwell Art Supplies/Eureka Award 2 -Moe Win    Myanmar  Padaung Old Woman
Rockwell Art Supplies/Eureka Award 3 – Conny Jager   Canada Under the L

Daniel Smith Colors of Inspiration Award – William Rogers   Canada  Matinee Duel
Daniel Smith Designers Award – Kashinath Das   India   View of Chandni Chowk, Delhi
Daniel Smith New Colors Award –  Anna Ivanova  Russia  Bayaders

The DeSerres Award -Anthony Saldutto  Canada      Rays
QoR Modern Watercolor by GOLDEN Award – Corinne Izquierdo  France  Pecheur du Sud
Rosemary & Co Brush Award – Richard Tiejun Chao      Australia      A Thinker

Da Vinci Paint Co Awards:
1. Jacques Villares      Spain      Madrid 70’s
2. Jansen Chow      Malaysia      Night Market
3. Jose Apaza      Mexico      Cantera (quarry)
4. Mykhailo Rychkov      Ukraine      Evening in Quebec
5. Yelena Iokton      Kazakhstan      Hunter

Escoda Brushes Awards:
1. Barbara Eguchi   Canada      Rhythms of Kensington
2. Sun Jiangang      China      The stone beach under the sun
3. Shan raza amrohvi      Pakistan      Buzkashi game 2

Richmond Hill Creative Eye Love and Peace Awards:
1. Mohammad ali Yazdchi      Iran      White Flowers
2. Barbara Farren   Canada      Sleeping at the Airport
3. Gail Sutherland      Canada      D’Aubins Cove
4. Shirin Nematzadeh      Iran      Pink flowers

To view images as a slideshow, click on one and then use arrow cursor keys.

Posted on

Last Four Days to see the WHOLE Exhibit and more…

As noted in our last post, the entire exhibit is currently located at Boynton House in Richmond Hill (at Richmond Green). The exhibit at Boynton House will close as of October 15, when all paintings will be taken from there, and some will be selected to relocate to the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts.

In the meantime, there is plenty to enjoy at Boynton House and it would certainly be worth your while to get there before the end of this weekend!  Our exhibit has been so popular that over 1100 people have visited as of Tuesday afternoon!

View the now over 90 paintings on exhibit, (combining those from Burr House as well.)

Experience the magic of Ona Kingdon painting live daily.

Try a watercolour activity this weekend.

See IWS Canada’s “Love Around the World” paint video preview.

Come join in the celebration of watercolour!

Notes from last weekend:

We had a wonderful day today letting the children of our local community in Richmond Hill experiment with Watercolour. Hope you enjoy looking through our Symphony in Watercolour Children’s album, just a small selection from all the paintings created at Boynton House on Richmond Green on Saturday the 6th and Sunday 7th October:

 

Thank you to Da Vinci Paint Co. for providing a few of your dot palettes for the children to experiment with. They LOVED creating their own #DaVinciMoment and to DeSerres for providing the paper for this activity. You are both AWESOME sponsors of our Symphony in Watercolour.

Posted on

All Paintings are now at Boynton House

Just a note to keep everyone apprised of the current locations of our ‘A Symphony in Watercolour’ international exhibit.  While up until today, paintings were at two locations, Boynton House and Burr House in Richmond Hill,  the ones at Burr House are moving today to Boynton House, so that the entire exhibit will be located there.

Later on in the month, some of the paintings will be moving to the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts, in anticipation of the special performance there at the end of the month (October 27).

For full information on exhibit locations and timing, please click on this sentence.

To buy tickets for the performance at RHCPA, please click the image below:

Posted on

A Symphony in Watercolour begins tomorrow!

International Artists Gather For Cultural Event in Richmond Hill

Tomorrow, watercolour artists from all over the globe will gather in Richmond Hill, Ontario, just north of Toronto, to celebrate the opening of ‘A Symphony in Watercolour’.

All art enthusiasts are invited to attend the opening event at 12 noon on Friday, September 28, at Boynton House and Richmond Green.  After a formal ribbon cutting ceremony, there will be part of the exhibition to view, master watercolour artists in attendance, and representatives from Winsor & Newton, QoR Watercolours, Daniel Smith, DeSerres Art Store, Da Vinci paints and RockWell Art Supplies demonstrating products.  Throughout the afternoon there will be opportunities for plein air painting. The official opening and awards ceremony will be at 3 pm. Later, at 6 pm, tea and scones will be available at Burr House, another heritage building which will serve as the remainder of the exhibit space.

The exhibition, jointly presented by the International Watercolour Society of Canada (IWS Canada) and the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour/La Société Canadienne De Peintres En Aquarelle (CSPWC/SCPA), will feature the work of 95 watercolour artists from Canada and around the world.  From a total of 320 entries from 32 countries who entered the competition earlier this year, 80 finalists were juried into “A Symphony in Watercolour” by Anne McCartney CSPWC, Peter Marsh CSPWC, and Rainbow Ze (youth juror). The other 15 artists are winners from last year’s IWS Canada online exhibition and attending jurors, as well as presidents and vice-presidents of the presenting societies.

The five day festival opening the exhibit will continue the next day with a presentation merging painting, video and photography by renowned artist David McEown, winner of IWS Canada’s 2017 online competition ‘150 Ways to Celebrate’, a Canada 150 event.  This presentation will take place at Richmond Hill Central Library as part of the Canada-wide Culture Days event. In addition, “Experiment with Watercolour” activities will be set up so the public can try it out.

Other activities for the five day festival include field trips to various places in the area for plein air painting, photography, and general tourist enjoyment, such as the Oak Ridges Moraine, Black Creek Pioneer Village, the David Dunlap Observatory, Toronto Island, and the CN Tower 360 restaurant. Some of these activities are free, others will have costs associated with them.  Of special note is a field trip to the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, which the gallery is providing to the IWS Canada and CSPWC/SCPA group as a sponsored event for this festival. Further information for all of these activities is available at IWSCanada.ca.

A very special part of this exhibition will be a live performance by the Richmond Hill Philharmonic Orchestra, called ‘Symphonic Watercolours’, which will take place to close the exhibit, on October 27, 2018, at 8 p.m.  A slide show of the beautiful watercolour art in the exhibit will accompany music specially selected to enhance its viewing. In addition, live interpretive painting will be performed by Andrew Sookrah and Bonnie Steinberg.  The theatre will also display a selection of actual paintings from the exhibit. It will truly be ‘A Symphony in Watercolour’.

Where:  Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada – various venues – mainly Boynton House and Burr House
Who:  The International Watercolour Society of Canada (IWS Canada) (A Branch of the International Watercolor Society (IWS Globe)) and the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour/La Société Canadienne De Peintres En Aquarelle (CSPWC/SCPA)
When:  September 28 to October 27, 2018
What:  ‘A Symphony in Watercolour’ – an international exhibit and festival of watercolour art
Why:  To celebrate the medium of watercolour, and how diverse cultures can be brought together through their enthusiasm for common interests, while appreciating their differences.

The painting in the featured graphic at the top, Colour of Music, is by one of our jurors, Anne McCartney CSPWC, AWS, TWSA

The painting in this graphic is ‘Inner Symphony’ by Ona Kingdon, CSPWC, NWS, TWSA, IWS Master – President of IWS Canada. (Subject is Jessica Kun, the artistic director of the Richmond Hill Philharmonic Orchestra.)

IWS Canada would like to once again sincerely thank our sponsors!

Posted on

DeSerres Award!

Some very lucky artist is going to win the DeSerres Award at our Symphony in Watercolour Exhibition which opens September 28th at Boynton House, on Richmond Green, Richmond Hill, Ontario.  It includes a wealth of Fabriano and Arches paper and several other goodies too.

Thank you DeSerres from all of us at IWS Canada and CSPWC/SCPA!

DeSerres will also have a booth on our opening day and have supplied some paper for our visiting master artists to use for their plein air painting that day. They are also helping to run the ‘Let’s try Watercolour ‘ Activity at the Richmond Hill Central Library on September 29th.

For more details of our Five Days of Celebration event please visit iwscanada.ca or view our 5 day event pdf.

Posted on

Lake Wilcox Park

The northern half of Richmond Hill is located on a natural feature called the Oak Ridges Moraine which stretches more than 160 km between the Niagara Escarpment and the Trent River.  The Oak Ridges Moraine is known for its varied habitats and geographic features shaped 13,000 years ago during the last ice age.

The Oak Ridges Moraine is special because it provides naturally filtered water for abundant wildlife, surrounding populations, and natural areas.

As part of our five days of celebrations opening ‘A Symphony in Watercolour’, we will visit the Oak Ridges Moraine Parkland and Boardwalk (free activity) from 4-7 pm on Saturday September 29.

55 Olde Bayview Ave,
Richmond Hill, ON L4E 3C8
Transportation: If possible we will carpool to this venue.

Take a leisurely walk along the boardwalk. See the sun set over Lake Wilcox, a traditional Kettle Lake on the Oak Ridges Moraine. Opportunities for photography and plein air painting are plentiful.

For more information on our 5 day opening celebration event please visit the detailed outline HERE.

Photo credit: Ona Kingdon

Posted on

One Month Until Opening of ‘A Symphony in Watercolour’!

We are really excited to count down the days to go until the festival begins!  In case you haven’t visited the website lately, we have a whole bunch of information available on the home page, and also on the exhibit page.   But we thought we’d put a lot of it in this blog post anyway!

First: here is the poster our sponsor Focal Designs designed for us.  Thank you Focal Designs!

SiWC Poster-print

If you click on the link above you’ll see the poster – these will be on display all over Richmond Hill and further afield.  We are hoping that some kind souls might choose to print one copy themselves and help us out with our advertising!

Second:  A map of where it is all happening can be found here.  The map includes the two exhibit locations:

  • Boynton House & Richmond Green
    1300 Elgin Mills Road East
    Richmond Hill, ON L4S 1M5
  • Burr House Gallery & Tea Room
    528 Carrville Rd,
    Richmond Hill, ON L4C 6E6

The ribbon cutting occurs at noon at Boynton House and Richmond Green on September 28.  We will have some music at 2:30, then awards and speeches at 3:00 pm.  The exhibition paintings at Boynton House will of course be available all afternoon until 5:00 pm, and many of the master painters will be attending.  Throughout the afternoon there will be opportunities for plein air painting.  Also, there will be representatives from Winsor & Newton, QoR Watercolours, Daniel Smith, DeSerres Art Store, Da Vinci paints and RockWell Art Supplies demonstrating products.

At 6:00 pm, the opening day will continue at Burr House where the rest of the exhibition paintings will be on display.  Tea and scones will be available, and you can observe the local spinners and weavers at work in this heritage building.  Our opening day will end at 8:00 pm.

You’ll find the locations of all the festivities happening during the Five Day Celebration Event (September 28-October 2), and the location of the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts, which is where the concert “Symphonic Watercolours” is being performed by the Richmond Hill Philharmonic Orchestra on October 27, to close the show, on the  MAP.

Third: here is most of the event information briefly summarized in one graphic suitable for sharing on social media.

Painting is ‘Inner Symphony’ by Ona Kingdon, CSPWC, NWS, TWSA, IWS Master – President of IWS Canada. (Subject is Jessica Kun, the artistic director of the Richmond Hill Philharmonic Orchestra.)

Fourth: here is a summary of the information for the Five Days of Festivities:

Painting is ‘Colour of Music’ by Anne McCartney, CSPWC, AWS, TWSA – one of the jurors for ‘A Symphony in Watercolour’.

Fifth:  A more detailed outline of the Five Day Celebration Event is here.

Remember – you are invited, and so are your friends, and their friends… please tell them all about it.

Sixth:  We cannot thank our sponsors enough!

 

Posted on

Escoda Brushes Awards!

Escoda brushes have very kindly donated 3 of these awesome travel brush sets as awards for our ‘A Symphony in Watercolour’ Exhibition. The awards will be announced at our opening event on September 28th at Boynton House on Richmond Green, Richmond Hill Ontario, Canada.  (MAP of all event locations here)

Thank you Escoda for your generous sponsorship from all of us at IWS Canada and CSPWC.

For more information about our five day event visit our home page at  iwscanada.ca or view our 5 day event pdf .

Escoda Brushes Awards
Website Powered by WordPress.com.