The Art Gallery of Bancroft held a closing reception over the weekend for their November exhibit, called Finding Community.
The exhibit looked a bit different than usual – the gallery hosted Elizabeth Broere Jackson as an artist-in-residence, and she spent the month in the gallery producing new work and meeting gallery-goers.
Jackson splits her year between her home in Newfoundland and her home in North Kawartha. Much of her work features the colourfully-painted homes that have become synonymous with the Newfoundland coastline.
“I like to create happy art. Lots of colours, Newfoundland houses, or animals. I’m pretty diverse, I do driftwood, I do sea glass. I like it all,” she said.
The exhibit was a continuation of a program the gallery started earlier this year, when they hosted Kayla St-Pierre from Guelph as an artist-in-residence in May.
Both artists started producing work on the topic of finding community during their time in the gallery.
Board of directors chair Molly Moldovan said the artists’ work will meet at an exhibition in May 2026, and they’ll showcase work they started during their residencies.
She said St-Pierre is newly graduated and just starting out in the artistic field, whereas Jackson has been making art for a long time.
Moldovan said combined with their different geographic backgrounds, it will create an interesting comparison.
She hopes the gallery will be able to host more artists-in-residence going forward.
“It shows a different side of what galleries do to the community at large, because they come in, they get to see the artist working, they get to see that this work is for an exhibition, it’s not just randomly made, and it’s thematic, it has meaning,” Moldovan said.
This Friday, the gallery is hosting an opening reception for their 43rd annual juried exhibition, on until Dec. 27.
