FOYER ART

Foyer Art uses Township of Langley facilities as gallery space for local artists to display their work. These highly visible spaces give artists an opportunity to showcase their work, and give the people of Langley a chance to learn more about our local artists.

The Foyer Art program is open to all artists of British Columbia who are Canadian citizens. Preference is given to those artists who are residents of the Township of Langley, the City of Langley, or the Fraser Valley.

Jordan Turner

For years I have created work based on a detail oriented process, seeing how close I could come to creating realistic images. I have made the creation of photo-like images the aesthetic style to which I adhere. Every medium that I use has furthered my fixation on realism. It has become a real obsession for me; one that has been as aggravating as it has been satisfying. In 2003 I began employing the airbrush because it could take me to new heights of realism that I had never experienced with a bristle brush. I have been obsessed with details, so every piece that I create has taken me hours of meticulous examination and criticism, retouching, retouching, over and over again, just like the document you are reading here, I might add.

It is my current goal to scale back my artistic obsessiveness. I now spend less time on a piece of art because I use fewer movements of brush to accomplish my goals. I paint in a calculated manner yet give myself more freedoms. Let the leash out a bit, as it were. Art for me is no longer stressful . . . well not as stressful as it was in the past.

Juan de Fuca 01
Watercolour

Ron Bryson

I do my black and white photography work in two different formats, different concepts, and different reasons creatively, but equally enjoyable and satisfying to me.

I make fine art prints of subjects in my surroundings that are pleasing and meaningful to me, usually landscapes, old barns, trees, fences, gates, gardens, etc. I maintain complete control of these images by doing all the darkroom processes and the mounting and framing and whenever possible the display and lighting as well. These prints are shown in my own gallery or a commercial gallery and when others see them and enjoy them enough to buy them; I find this pleasing and satisfying.

My other work is large collaged pieces made up of images that express very personal feelings directly connected to my life experiences. The act of making my personal joy or sorrow or bewilderment into visible images helps me to understand and work through these things in my life. When I allow others to see them and they understand and share their own feelings and experiences with me, it fills my need to communicate intimately with others.

Untitled
Black & white photographic print

Nilufer Mistry

I like creating my Art using ink pens as it gives me freedom to produce detailed designs. I start by choosing a shape then add finer elements of form and design within it. I am attracted to balance and symmetry in design and try to incorporate these elements in some of my work. At other times my Art is more spontaneous and holistic.

I believe that all Life Systems-from the smallest cell and organism to the entire Universe-evolve and exist in a series of concentric Life circles or "chakras" (worlds within worlds) that influence and are influenced by one another.

Autumn in Derby-Reach Park
Ink on paper

Michelle Veldhuizen

This trip-tic (I was I am) Blue with sadness is part of an ongoing series totaling five. Each series will touch on one of the five stages of loss: denial, anger/resentment, shock/bargaining, sadness/depression, and finally acceptance.

As I stumble through each stage, pass through and fall back in, I have expressed and represented through texture and paint the stages that I was in. As of yet-acceptance is not a stage that I have come to.

(1 was I am) Blue with Sadness
[1 of 3]
Mixed media

Jacqui Campbell

I currently am interested in working with cultural ideals of beauty and the impact it has on our society. Questions of where the boundaries of society's influences and our own instincts reside is a central focus. Cultural ideologies are embedded in us as soon as we enter this world. In the spectrum of human beauty, the ideal is forever changing. By creating unrealistic ideals that are unattainable, how far will society go in order to succeed in reaching these ideals: how do these cultural constructs create insecurities and feelings of inadequacy, impacting our identities? What impact does it have on the way we view the world around us?

In some of my painting I have created close-up fragments of skin where the images are vague and unrecognizable. This encourages the viewer to question and doubt what they are looking at rather than recognizing what they see and taking it as truth. In other paintings, enlarged portions of the face are literally cut and placed onto separate canvases, creating hybrid reconstructions. Within these, I show great amounts of detail in the skin and hair which have been erased in magazine spreads.

These works comment on cultural fears around age and death and how our society goes to great lengths to hide the passage of time. I have looked to society's common notions of what is "ugly" to create my own ideas of beauty, and then presented them to the public as a challenge to the common ideologies that are in place.

Gender and Youth Series Image 5, 2003
Acrylic on canvas