When it comes to the visual arts, each gallery invites viewers into a specific moment in time in the artist’s life or creative process.
For Lee Beaton, that reality is truer than most. Her latest exhibit, titled A Moment in Time, showcases her mixed media pieces that begin with moments between artistic ventures.
“I’ve done a couple of different exhibitions, and while I’ve been doing the exhibitions, I’ve been going around with my family and taking photographs,” Beaton said in an interview on Morning Light. “I really like to in Manitoba – we have such a wonderful sky, and it’s so beautiful at different times of the day, different times of the year. So, I started capturing these images – moments in time... and then I started painting these pictures.”
Audience members will recognize several Manitoba landscapes stretching all the way from Pinawa in the Whiteshell down to Altona in the Pembina Valley. While these are not images of Beaton’s home community of Portage la Prairie, they do carry a component of personal reflection and vulnerability.
“What I did was I wrote some letters to myself, you know, trying to be positive,” she explained, noting that many of these pieces were completed during the height of the COVID-19 public health lockdowns. “It was not a very positive time,” she continues, “and I was really wanting to create some positivity within my painting. Even though people can’t see all what I wrote, there’s some glimpses where they can see some of the words... capturing some of that personal journey of mine.”
Even though society has in many ways moved past those pandemic years, Beaton hopes that people can find inspiration in art created during that time. “A lot of fear for a lot of people, the feeling and the fear and all of that is still there. How we responded to it is still there, still a part of us. And for me, mental health is so important and I know one of the things I can do to really help my mental health is to create art. It kind of releases some of those negative feelings that I have and... puts me into a better, more of a positive frame of mind.”
The nature of transformation from fearful to positive is something that Beaton admits is a little paradoxical when it comes to capturing an isolated moment in time. “A feeling is not an easy thing to capture,” she says, “but I hope that when people look at my work, they find some joy in some piece within it. We all have negative in our lives and I just want to try and bring some beauty to overcome some of that.”
A Moment in Time is on at the 210 Gallery on Princess Street in Winnipeg’s Exchange District until March 17. The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and admission is free. An artist reception is also taking place with Lee Beaton on Friday, March 7 from 6 to 9 p.m.
