News Archives: GPRC Visual Arts Instructor to bring Exhibit to an International Stage
Wednesday, May 30th, 2018
GPRC Visual Arts Instructor Tina Martel combines the literary with the artistic in an exhibit entitled Not in the Pink: The Creative Process that she launches on the international stage June 21.
Not in the Pink is the title of Martel’s award-winning memoir published in 2014. The book documents the events following Martel’s 2011 breast cancer diagnosis and features stunning illustrations, sketches and paintings Martel completed while on bed rest in between her treatments. A few years after publishing her memoir, Martel was inspired to reimagine it. “The book has mostly been in the literary world, so I wanted to take it back into the art world,” she explained. “I wanted to put it back in a gallery setting.”
For Martel’s exhibit at The Works Art & Design Festival in Edmonton, she will show a series of early drafts of her Not in the Pink sketches juxtaposed with the polished final products. She explained that as she was writing her memoir, she often went through several drafts of a sketch before she arrived on just the right colour or composition.
“What I ended up with in my studio was four different versions of the same page,” she said. “When people came over to my studio, they were fascinated by all the changes I’d made; how one thing had morphed into something else.”
The positive reaction to her early sketches, even the rough and unlovely ones, inspired Martel to exhibit her creative process. “They’re like these little windows into how an artist’s mind works.”
Martel has already exhibited Not in the Pink: The Creative Process at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, where it was received exceptionally well. Positive feedback from the community motivated her to take her exhibit on the road.
“There’s something very vulnerable about this piece, because some of the sketches are bad. They’re badly designed, they don’t work,” she said. “But I think the public is more fascinated than we think by how artists get to where they get.”
Martel’s exhibit acts as a reminder that works of art do not just pop into existence fully formed, but take time and patience to create.
Catch Tina Martel’s Not in the Pink: The Creative Process at The Works Art & Design Festival in Edmonton, June 21 to July 3. More info: http://www.theworks.ab.ca/the-festival/
