A call for reflection away from the distractions and noise of everyday lives, in her installation Breath, Ann Manuel intricately wraps moments and objects into metaphors, inviting reflection on our connection to family, our separation from nature, and the inevitable ebbs and flows of our lives. 

Breath is the final work in the Sanctuary series which Ann began two decades ago. The inspiration for the series began with the last breath of Ann’s father and ended with the last wish of her mother, almost sixteen years apart. Ann has been working as a multi-disciplinary artist with a focus on drawing, painting, printmaking, and installation. Over many years, she has been a supporter, advocate, educator, and studio artist at Sunbury Shores, sharing her skills and inspiration with the community. The installation includes a film of the same name by New Brunswick filmmaker Matthew Brown. 

Dianne Twombly
Dianne Twombly creates distinctive digital assemblages that address themes of transformation and the passage of time. In her work, she explores the human connection to lost places by first photographing, then digitally deconstructing abandoned or declining architecture, and finally re-imagining them in more expansive, dream-inspired landscapes.  Her unique images are unexpected and charming.    

In reconstructing these edifices in more spacious and surreal surroundings, Dianne invites viewers to look more closely at the many layers of the human spaces we occupy and to see within them a world of new possibilities. Situated on a cloud or perched on the edges of cliffs, her architectural structures explore themes of decay, renewal and cycles of life and death in both natural and urban environments. They suggest a surreal and fantastic glimpse into the infinite possibilities of the human imagination. 

Twombly holds BA and MSW degrees from the University of Toronto and a BFA from York University. She has received numerous awards and grants and participated in solo and group exhibitions in Canada. She has also taken part in projects and commissions in Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa.    

Roisin Cadieux
Cadieux’s love of nature has helped her to focus her creativity using materials that suggest healing and wellbeing. Over time, she has collected a massive antique music archive (1723-1972) and created a paper “palette of time” using antique music scores. With this as the foundation for her sculpture, she delicately combines papier-mâché with elements of collage and mosaic. 

In Fantastical Transformations, Roisin presents mythical beasts and creatures in forms that reference the past while also giving them a new life through subtle additions and imaginative embellishments.   In the exhibition, the creatures range from fish and animals to hearts and figurative forms.

Cadieux’s creativity is also expressed through music. For her, the notion of music as a universal language of healing and joy is profound and incorporated in all her work. She hand-cuts the music scores to use in her work, reminding her of the passage of time and earlier performers. Roisin has conducted workshops in collage and papier mâché throughout the Maritimes.  A self-taught artist who was born in Manitoba, Roisin currently lives and works in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. 

Jeannie Pappas
Jeannie Pappas creates ceramic creatures rooted in folklore, mysticism, and nature, creating her own contemporary mythology in three dimensions. With their toothy smiles, subtle gestures, and gritty personalities, many of her playful creatures are individually enclosed under glass domes, as if they are precious specimens to be sheltered and/or guarded. 

Created in clay porcelain with light washes of underglaze, Jeannie’s figurative sculptures are infused with a raw authenticity that encourages the viewer to establish each figure with its own personality. As she works, Jeannie delves deep into her own emotions and experiences, inviting viewers into a micro-world where they can explore an alternate universe and transfer or model their own emotions on the hand-sculpted creatures.

A graduate of the Ontario College of Art and currently living in Toronto, Jeannie has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Canada and the United States; she has received several awards and reviews in art publications. 

Angel Commins uses the interplay of colour and form to celebrate the natural environment and its ability to bring peace in an often-challenging world. Through her abstractions of the environment inspired by the beauty she sees in Charlotte County, Commins looks to form, line and colour to define the landscape, create meaning, and generate an emotional response in the viewer.

In her exhibition, the series Memory 1-6, Fredericton artist Audree Hamelin St Amour presents brooches using natural and found elements, and traditional jewellery techniques and materials. In her work, she reflects on memory formation and transformation, and on themes of ephemerality, transformation, and mindfulness.

Mother and daughter duo, Jennifer Wiebe and Lena Beckley, celebrate the natural world through observational painting in oil and watercolor. Wiebe’s work captures the dynamic and playful relationship between sunlight and the moving surface of water. Beckley examines in detail the various textures found within local seashells. Each artist invites the viewer to consider the wonder and abundance of beauty found within and around Atlantic region coastlines.

Two New Brunswick artists explore how nature inhabits us, and how we inhabit nature. For Jennifer Pazienza and Paul Édouard Bourque, the exhibition is the third in a series of three that presents a dialogue between and among their work. Their discussion centers on how individual and co-created artistic identity, memory, and time can influence art. Pazienza’s landscapes and Bourque’s images evoke a heightened understanding of the relationship between people and nature.

Amber Young’s lyrical paintings depict how flowers expressively growing up out of wild fields or along the edges of ponds and streams can reflect in the water and grow up into expansive open skies. Inspired by her travels in Asia and her Canadian roots, the artist hopes to combine her love of water and water reflections with an exploration of blossoms and wild foliage and the feeling of being within nature.

An annual exhibition of artwork by Charlotte County students of all ages. This year, young artists are focusing on the theme of Earthfest in their art, for example, protecting and preserving our planet, helping to build a sustainable future for all, and celebrating Earth and all living beings.