Applications for 2027/28 Exhibitions will be available soon.
Summer hours have started! We are now open every day of the week.
Sunday & Monday : 12 – 4 pm
Tuesday – Saturday: 10 am – 4 pm
Exploration of arts and culture
Exploration describes ongoing, adaptive learning; cultural and natural environments encompass nature and community diversity; with the goal to enrich our communities’ resilience and well-being through creativity and positive response.
Developing visual literacy is key to navigating today’s highly visual society. Making and understanding art promotes problem solving, communication and emotional skills. For our future, we encourage kids to develop a broader worldview, find their unique perspective and powerful means of self-expression.
Who We Are
Sunbury Shores Arts & Nature Centre Inc. is a charitable cultural centre with the mandate to promote and maintain opportunities and facilities for the study, practice and appreciation of the arts, handcraft, nature, and conservation.
Our Vision is to be an enduring and accessible space that supports creativity and welcomes diverse users.
Our Mission is to explore cultural and natural environments through creative experiences to enrich our communities.
Our role in our Community
We respond to our communities’ needs through programming for all ages and skill levels, with exhibitions, professional instructors, arts education, music, film and literary events, professional development assistance, high quality studio facilities, and more. SSANC has endeavored to be a supporter of all arts and cultures of St. Andrews and surrounding Charlotte County communities since 1964, and are proud to have multi-generational program users.
We share best practices with like-minded centers through the NB Art Centres Association, to support both emerging and established artists, regional schools and other non-profit organizations – and promote St. Andrews, the Southeast, and New Brunswick as an inspirational destination for arts & nature experiences, tourism, and cultural development.
News
Current Exhibitions
Among Other Places – with Dan Xu and Raina Spalding
July 10 – August 15, 2026
Opening Friday, July 10, 5:00 – 7:00 pm
More Info
Among Other Places explore the landscape as an emotional space that presents emotional perceptions rather than a geographical one. Landscape painting in New Brunswick often draws from a rooted tradition or provenance of the land, depicting it as vast and beautiful but conventional none the less. This exhibition not only offers a visual contrast to this convention but a thematic contrast as well. Whether depicting the act of travel and time through light and movement or presenting internal contemplations of leisure spaces, the mediums and methods of both artists are intentionally applied to draw us towards our experiences, using landscape as perception and memory rather than documenting the land itself.
Dan Xu’s landscapes unfold the Canadian landscape through Chinese brushwork. This integration of east and west may not be new but it can be taken for granted. It offers an important perspective on landscape painting and its place within Canadian history, where carving out a true, north, strong, and free identity from European art was parallel with colonizing the landscape.
Opposite to Dan Xu’s work is Raina Spalding’s Beach series, instead depicting an absence of landscape that evokes a sense of stillness. Spalding’s simple but iconic style combines simple compositions, people, symbols of travel and leisure, and prioritizes shadow to highlight tension. Depicting singular subjects with only the lightest of implied context of place (the beach), Spalding presents another type of dual perception between quiet and stillness, alone and being lonely, connection and solitude.
Emerging Artists – with Lisa Dewar, Robyn Kern, Sophie McIlwaine, and Florence Small
July 10 – August 15, 2026
Opening Friday, July 10, 5:00 – 7:00 pm
More Info
Each year we aim to promote emerging artists and bring a focus to exciting talents that deserve a much wider audience. Whether still fresh to the arts scene, or re-emerging from a different location, direction, or media – we celebrate difference, movement, and adventure.
Exhibitions
Exhibits change every 6 weeks. We feature solo and group exhibitions by professional and emerging artists. Visit us to experience and enjoy the unique work of New Brunswick artists, and work by artists from afar.
Courses
Professional and emerging artists, experienced instructors, and environmental specialists offer quality courses for Children and Adults of all ages. We strive to be one of the leading visual arts centres in Atlantic Canada.
Studios
Find out why our first-rate studio facilities attract students at all levels, artists and nature lovers! Our printmaking, ceramics, metals and media studios are professionally-equipped spaces for all skill levels.
Sunbury Shores Arts & Nature acknowledges we are privileged to carry out our work on the traditional unceded territories of the Peskotomuhkati peoples. The staff and Board pay respect to the elders, past and present as descendants of this land. We honour the knowledge keepers and welcome their guidance as we strive to continue the long traditions of creation of arts and crafts, understanding of diverse cultures, with care and respect for our environment and all of our community members.