With vivid, bright, spring colours, Didsbury-based artist Dee Poisson has brought an inspiring collection of paintings titled Flowers In My Life, to the City.
The collection features bold, bright, almost surreal flowers that have inspired Poisson throughout her life. Flowers In My Life officially opened on March 27th and will run until April 17th at the Gallery on Main.
“I find that a lot of the flowers that I end up painting, they sometimes come about as a result of a relationship I have with a friend,” she said. “I love flowers and after a long winter, nothing makes me happier than to be able to get out to my garden to see what is growing.”
For Poisson the big brilliant flowers can often represent the many women she knows. “Women in general, we tend to bloom where we are planted,” she said. “Many of them are friends who have bloomed where they planted themselves in either a career or their home.”
Poisson uses strong colours and strong shapes because that is exactly how she sees her friends — as strong women.
Art is a personal endeavor, both to the artist and the viewer. Poisson finds it fascinating that for each flower, and each painting, there is a viewer that will feel directly connected to it. Poisson works in many mediums, but Flowers In My Life mainly showcases her painting abilities as well as her detailed coloured-pencil works.
“It’s a medium that I am moving more into just because I am really fascinated with the detail,” she said. “It’s the inspiration, but it’s also about what medium does that inspiration have to be in.”
Poisson’s works feature a lot of nature-based subjects, like florals, but she has yet to fully take on landscapes. “I like the idea of them,” she said. “There is definitely some interest there too. I don’t think a person is really limited. I think it’s good to explore things.”
One of the works showcased in Flowers In My Life is a mixed-media piece, where Poisson used strawberry leaves from her garden, carefully stamping them in to bring out textures and natural beauty.
“My artwork is multi-faceted, multi-genre and multi-media,” she acknowledges. “I grow through the various stages of my work as I live my life. The changes in my life are reflected in my work.”
Poisson began dabbling with her artistic vision in her mid-20s through the use of pottery. From there she began to draw, after joining the Ponoka Art Club to learn specific drawing techniques.
“I decided that I really liked it,” she said. “I even liked it more than pottery because it was more affordable. Then I just moved right into painting from there because of my love of anything creative. I also loved the idea of not having clay all over me all the time.”
As her life progressed, Poisson began bringing her coloured pencils to the swimming pool, carefully sketching as her kids swam.
“Those pieces were very small when I was doing that,” she said.
Eventually her works channeled into acrylic paintings as well as completing commissioned drawings of police dogs for police canine units in Alberta including the RCMP. Poisson said she is very excited to share her work in Lacombe, as she has many times throughout the years. She said she is most excited to showcase her seasonally-infused works this spring, showing that flowers can bloom all throughout the year.
Poisson, along with an artist collective called the Highway Artists will soon be presenting a collection of paintings inspired by the Alberta Hwy. 22 also known as the Cowboy Trail.
“There will definitely be some landscapes in that.”
The collection will be coming to the Gallery at Main this fall.
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