Sheila Kernan | The Quiet Joy

My series of paintings, The Quiet Joy, are love letters to the landscapes of Eastern Canada that hold deep personal significance to me.

My family's roots in the east stretch back generations, and each time I visit, I feel a profound connection to the land. It has left an indelible mark on my artistic imagination. This series is a repurposing and recombination of over 70 individual sketches and drawings. I hope to create something both familiar and new, evoking a sense of wonder and imagination, allowing for the essence of a place to flow through my work.

While my paintings are inspired by actual places, they are not just replications of reality. Rather, they are a synthesis of memory, imagination, and the natural beauty of the landscapes I've experienced, offering familiarity while also creating something, giving them the freedom to be new and unique.

Through my use of refined colours, layered washes, airbrush, stencilling, and textured techniques, I aim to capture subtle gradations and nuances of color, light, shadow, line, atmosphere, and form. I balance realism with abstraction, using negative and positive space to evoke a sense of place. Gestalt theory guides my decisions, emphasizing the interplay between individual elements and the whole, as well as the different ways viewers might perceive the paintings based on their own biases and preferences.

These landscapes, found in places like 1000 Islands, Lake Ontario, Muskoka Region, Killarney Provincial Park, and the Georgina Bay area, are beautifully dramatic and profound in their natural responses to prevailing weather conditions.

My goal is to transport viewers to a peaceful place where they can be reminded of the simple joys found in these areas.

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