For anyone who has not personally seen many of the South Cariboo lakes, artist Neil Pinkett has you covered.
His latest exhibit, Peregrinations, now on at the Station House Gallery features several of the region’s lakes.
Before it was time to give an artist talk at the opening, Pinkett shared some thoughts with Black Press Media about his art.
Originally from Nottinghamshire, England, Pinkett has lived in the South Cariboo since 2008, making his way as a full-time artist.
As a child, art was one of this strengths, yet when he left school he dropped it and went to university to study horticulture.
“I did a few other things over the years, but art was always in the background and slowly came back.”
It was 2007 when he started painting again.
He was living on the Prairies in Saskatchewan at the time and doing drawings and sketches with ink, pencil and oil pastel.
That changed one day when he dropped off his son at school and suddenly a pickup truck pulled up beside him.
“The driver said, ‘you’re that artist aren’t’ you?’ I said, ‘yes,’ and he said he worked at the recycling centre and someone had just dropped off a load of paints and did I want them,” he recalled. “It was good quality paint and supplies. I never saw the guy again - it just happened.”
Pinkett started painting that day and never looked back.
“I had wanted to paint but could not afford to make the transition.”
Those paints were oil, so he began using oil but then moved to working with acrylics.
“Nearly everything in this show is acrylic,” he said.
Today he lives near Sheridan Lake on a private acreage where he rents a home overlooking a small lake called Peters Lake.
Pointing to one of his works, titled Out of Body Experience, depicting a fish jumping out of the water, he said Peters Lake is featured in the painting.
“I’ve painted the lake quite often so people probably know the name now,” he added. “This is my third winter there.”
Ninety-nine per cent of his paintings are inspired by photographs he takes, but sometimes he enjoys painting on location.
Smiling he said there is only one painting in the show that is painted on location and it actually looks the least like it was.
It depicts the view from a studio he had in Forest Grove.
“I just kind of took a piece of cardboard and made an aperture to isolate the hillside so I would not be distracted by anything else and painted it over a couple of days. The light was favourable and it does not look like an on location painting, but it is.”
He also goes out in the field with his oil paints and slap the paint around, but there is more interest in his acrylic paintings, he said.
At the same time, he does not treat a photograph like it is the be-all and end-all.
“They say a camera never lies, but I don’t think that is entirely accurate.”
Photographs are the raw data of where everything should be and an indication of the light, however, there is a reason why he wants to paint it and hopefully that comes out the canvas as well, he explained.
When asked if he still gardens, he said his pursuit as an horticulturalist did not work out.
“It was the wrong profession for me. I discovered I was more of an environmentalist than a horticulturalist and at the time in the horticulture colleges they did not like environmentalists.”
He did, however, work at about 10 different youth hostels.
In his artist statement, Pinkett noted he is “drawn to abstractions within nature, the tangle of twigs, the constantly changing reflections on the lakes and the distorted pebbles beneath the surface, the ephemeral shapes of passing clouds.”
While most of the paintings are of scenes in the South Cariboo, there are a few from the Marble Range, Wells Gray Park and a few of England.
Peregrinations is in the main gallery until Saturday, March 23.
The Station House Gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Pinkett recently created the Halcro-Bergen mural for the front wall of the 100 Mile Curling Club.
READ MORE: Olympic mural a celebration of 100 Mile athletes
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